Business Council of Australia chief Bran Black says South Australia best place to set up shop

South Australia is the best place to set up a business and more should move here, says the Business Council of Australia’s chief.

South Australia has become the nation’s best place to establish a business and more should set up here, says the chief of an industry group representing the nation’s largest employers.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said analysis showed SA was top-ranking in construction, home start times, relative growth, planning and other key measures.

Mr Black, whose group represents the chief executives of the nation’s biggest companies, said SA had the nation’s most competitive payroll tax system but said lowering that impost in regions would help encourage businesses to set up outside Adelaide.

In an interview with The Advertiser, Mr Black also said the AUKUS security pact represented a “whole-of-economy transformation opportunity” extending far beyond the $368bn Adelaide-based construction of nuclear-powered submarines.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black. Picture: Britta Campion / The Australian

Mr Black, who will speak alongside Premier Peter Malinauskas at a business lunch on Friday, also praised his government's plan to expand production of copper and promote green iron and hydrogen production at Whyalla, billed as the State Prosperity Project.

His endorsement follows SA being ranked the nation’s top economy by CommSec in July.

“I think that South Australia with the right regulatory settings, with a government that is clearly ambitious for business investment, policy initiatives such as a State Prosperity Project, focusing on AUKUS – those things really count,” he said.

“They give a sense of momentum, and that’s what I think South Australians can really lean into and make the most of.”

Mr Black highlighted Mawson Lakes-based Saab Australia, which is recruiting 100 skilled workers in 100 days ahead of opening a $90m combat systems centre, as an example of business confidence in Adelaide and SA.

The Royal Australian Navy Hobart Class guided missile destroyer (DDG) HMAS Sydney fires a Harpoon surface to surface missile. Saab Australia’s new facility will house work including upgrading air warfare destroyers’ systems for better missile defence. Picture: Defence Imagery

He acknowledged criticism that either the United States or United Kingdom could abandon the AUKUS pact with a year’s notice, after a 50-year agreement was tabled in federal parliament on Monday.

“I think what we need to do is take on face value the fact that all three nations –

governments – are very strongly committed to investing in this program and

as long as that remains very strongly the case, then the opportunities for AUKUS should be considered real and we shouldn’t withhold action based on potential risk,” Mr Black said.

He echoed Mr Malinauskas’s challenge in May to eastern states to embrace AUKUS’s huge opportunities, declaring SA could not alone meet the mammoth challenge of building nuclear-powered submarines.

“This isn’t just submarines and it’s not just South Australian submarines. This is a whole-of-economy transformation opportunity, if we grab it and grab it sufficiently strongly and sufficiently quickly,” Mr Black said.

He highlighted the economic transformation spurred by San Diego’s giant naval base, where enterprise was spreading, saying this could happen in Adelaide and around AUKUS submarine bases on the west and east coast.

“You get these great collaborations between the military and other government agencies, big business, start-ups, and, of course research institutions,” he said.

“So it fuels a brand new economy. It generates jobs. It generates energy. It attracts people to want to be there and my hope is that the AUKUS bases in South Australia and wherever this

east-coast base might end up being, will be a catalyst not just for jobs on base but for precinct developments off base.”