Heavyweights to steer recovery from corona pandemic

The Business Council of Australia has set up a high-powered recovery group to develop specific solutions for reopening the ­economy.

Head of the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission Nev Power. Picture: Getty Images

The Business Council of Australia has set up a high-powered recovery group including Coca-Cola Amatil chief executive Alison Watkins, Telstra chief executive Andy Penn, Wesfarmers chief executive Rob Scott, and Seek’s Australian chief executive Ian Narev to develop specific solutions for the government’s three step plan for reopening the ­economy.

Ms Watkins will work with BCA chair Tim Reed and BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott to oversee 17 different BCA economic recovery working groups covering areas including health, telecommunications, housing and construction, tax, tourism, energy, trade and investment and workplace relations.

Other business leaders involved will include Australian Unity chair Rohan Mead, Sydney Airport chief executive Geoff Culbert, Australian Banking Association chief executive Anna Bligh and Mirvac chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz.

“The government has been clear that Australia needs a business-led recovery,” BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said, announcing the working group.

“Business is working overtime to come up with the pragmatic and workable ideas that will make it easier for Australia to bounce back strongly as the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic passes.”

With the federal government on Friday outlining a road map to reopen the economy by July, the BCA panel is aimed at developing specific industry by industry solutions that will allow the opening up to take place.

“We’re drawing on experience and expertise from every sector across the economy,” Ms Watkins said.

“We are casting a wide net to develop the right policies to lift competitiveness, boost productivity and fire up our performance across the whole economy,” she said.

Her comments came as the chairman of the federal government’s COVID commission, Nev Power, told The Weekend Australian the government was keen to restart the economy by progressively getting businesses back to work.

But Mr Power, the former chief executive of iron ore giant Fortescue Metals, warned that it would take a long time before business could get “back to normal.” There was no “silver bullet” of solutions to safely get the economy back to work, he added.

Mr Power said each employer would need to think about how to operate in a COVID-safe way for their own workplaces.

“I don’t think we will be back to business as normal until such time as the virus has been eradicated from the world,” he said.

“There will be progressive changes,” he said. “We won’t be going from zero to 100 per cent, that’s for sure.

“We need social distancing, we need those COVID-specific personal distancing behaviours we have all being doing to be maintained into workplace.”

The Reserve Bank on Friday warned of a slow recovery for the nation’s pandemic-affected job market, with the unemployment rate set to remain high for years to come.

In its quarterly statement on monetary policy published Friday, the RBA forecast the economy to contract 6 per cent in calendar 2020, with the jobless rate soaring to around 9 per cent by the end of the year.

The bank’s baseline projections put the unemployment rate at 7.5 per cent by the end of 2021, still well above the nearly 5 per cent rate at the start of this year.

The outlook confirms the RBA expects many jobs to be lost permanently as companies close due to virus-related lockdowns. Still, the outlook would be much worse had it not been for the government’s $130bn JobKeeper wage-subsidy scheme, the RBA said.

BCA president Tim Reed said the reopening of the economy provided a “once in a generation opportunity to recraft the kind of society we want to be and the type of modern, highly skilled, competitive and productive economy that we need to achieve it.”

Having heard the outline of the federal government’s three-step plan on Friday, Mr Reed said it was urgent for business to move ahead on plans for reopening the economy.

“We don’t have time to waste,” he said.

“We need a commonsense approach that will remove the obstacles standing in the way of quickly getting Australians back to work and putting more money back into their pockets.”

Business leaders have welcomed the federal government’s announcement of a three-step plan to get the economy back to work.

National Australia Bank chief executive Ross McEwan welcomed the national cabinet’s restart plan, saying it was “heartening” to see Australians doing the right thing.

“We’re now ready to take the first steps forward and I fully back the federal government’s safe and steady approach to getting jobs and businesses back on track. We look forward to hearing from the state and territory governments on the timing of the new measures,” Mr McEwan said.

“There’s still a long way to go and we must preserve the gains made on the health front.”

The Australian Investment Council also lauded the plan, but chief executive Yasser El-Ansary said a “carefully calibrated” economic recovery plan would be required to navigate the period ahead.

Dexus chief executive Darren Steinberg, who oversees the country’s largest office portfolio, said that the easing of restrictions would be an important catalyst to getting the economy moving.

“As people return to their workplaces, the many small businesses that rely on the patronage of the people who work in our cities — the cafes, the dry cleaners, the couriers — will now be able to reopen,” he said.

Mr Power said it was important to get hospitality and arts and cultural businesses back to work, as they were large employers.

But he said they had issues not only in social distancing but the economics of operating if they could only host a small number of people.

“If you own a pub, you need a certain amount of patrons to get the lights on and pay the air conditioning bill,” he said.

“It may be that you need 50 per cent in your restaurant to make it viable but you can only fit in 25 per cent with social distancing.

“Trying to work out systems and solutions for that is going to be one of our biggest challenges.”

He said businesses that relied on international travel were facing severe challenges as travel would not restart soon. “Those businesses are going to be hit very hard.”

With Max Maddison