Albanese warns corporate chiefs of ‘extreme anti-business’ opposition

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has gone on the offensive in a row with business over economic reform, telling corporate chiefs that Labor was sparing them from “extreme” policies including Coalition ideas against their interest.

In a sharp response to growing attacks on his government, Albanese said he was acting on business fears about the nation’s fortunes – but he gave no quarter on their demands for a retreat on workplace laws that help big unions.

The nation’s peak business group redoubled its warnings about both major parties by predicting the country would fragment if populism took hold, saying too many employers were being turned into “scapegoats” in political debate.

The pointed exchanges at a business dinner on Tuesday night followed a clash in the Senate on housing policy, with the Coalition and the Greens joining forces to drag out debate on a Labor proposal to use federal funds to help 40,000 people buy their first homes.

With the Help to Buy housing law at risk of defeat, Albanese seemed to open the door to an early election by saying “we’ll wait and see” when asked if he would seek a double dissolution if the Labor agenda was blocked in parliament.

The government has not met the key conditions for a double dissolution – having a bill rejected twice in the Senate, with the votes held three months apart – and has run out of time to set up such an election trigger this year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a press conference earlier today.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Greens leader Adam Bandt dismissed the idea, however, and challenged Labor to agree to stronger action on housing – such as scrapping negative gearing and other tax breaks for property investors – to secure the votes to pass the housing law this week.

Albanese said the government was “very cautious” about negative gearing because there was a risk that changing the tax rules would reduce housing supply rather than helping renters.

With economic growth sliding to just 0.2 per cent in the June quarter, the government is fighting Opposition Leader Peter Dutton over the cost of living while facing business fears that workplace law and environmental regulations are adding to costs.

Albanese used his speech to the Business Council of Australia dinner in Sydney on Tuesday night to warn the company chiefs that he was standing against Coalition proposals that would hurt them, without naming policies such as Dutton’s push for laws to force Coles and Woolworths to sell assets.

“Throughout the past two years, we’ve stood against some pretty extreme anti-business policies put forward by members of the crossbench, and perhaps more surprisingly, by the opposition,” Albanese said.

“We’ve stood up for some of Australia’s biggest employers, when others have attacked you for holding a view different to their own.

“We don’t do any of this because it’s politically convenient. We do it out of respect for what you do – and because we value what you say.”

Albanese also pushed back against the idea that he was too timid to embark on genuine economic reform, citing the government’s two budget surpluses, its savings with the National Disability Insurance Scheme and its aged care plan.

“Proof that economic reform is not confined to a vanished golden age – it remains our challenge to meet and our opportunity to seize,” he said.

Business Council president Geoff Culbert, a former chief executive at Sydney Airport, repeated the peak group’s warnings about higher costs from workplace laws and red tape.

“We have to resist the cycle of populist short-term thinking,” he said.

“We have to be prepared to face into and tackle the hard issues that will define our future. And the scapegoating of business has to stop.”

Employment Minister Murray Watt will use a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday to warn of greater conflict in workplace relations if the Coalition took power.

“As we approach the next election, this choice – between workplace co-operation or conflict – will become much starker, because it underpins the choice Australians will have, about the wages and employment policies our country adopts,” Watt says in a draft of his speech.

“It’s why workplace relations will be a key battleground at the next election and Australians will have a clear choice to make.

“We know that, if he’s elected, Peter Dutton will use conflict and fear to divide Australians and turn back the clock on workplace rights.”

With the Coalition vowing to repeal large parts of the Labor workplace regime, the government is warning that this would mean casual workers would lose their right to seek to become permanent employees.

The government is also warning that people would lose the “right to disconnect” that currently allows them to refuse to take work calls outside their agreed working hours.

But Coalition workplace spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said the Business Council’s warnings showed there was “despair in the business community” and that employers were “going backwards” under Labor.

A standard, half-Senate election is due by May 17.

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