Corporate Australia is gearing up for a fight with the Albanese government on industrial relations, tax, and skilled migration amid a declaration from the big business lobby that Canberra lacks an ambitious growth plan.

Business Council of Australia president Tim Reed, referring to the government’s passing of controversial multi-employer bargaining laws last year and its plans to regulate casual work and labour hire, in a second tranche of industrial relations reforms this year, said: “the worst is yet to come on IR”.