Open state borders is at the top of their agenda.
With the budget just over a month away the BCA is seeking to get ahead of whatever the political spin from both sides of politics might become. In what many think might be an election year. It wants the focus on debt to remain, not fade from view in these high spending times, albeit with a simultaneous focus on economic growth as the solution to debt.
Underdeveloped countries have long run deficit budgets with the aim of using the investment to drive growth. Growing the economy can shrink debt as a percentage of GDP.
The BCA wants to ensure that the government doesn’t waste debt on inefficient or unproductive ventures in the budget. That is why it is calling for action such as a broad based 20 per cent investment allowance and an extension of the government’s temporary expensing measures which will help with employment.
The BCA supports ending JobKeeper at the end of this month, as long as some targeted assistance replaces the scheme. It also is continuing to call for industrial relations reforms, although with the IR minister out of action and the government on the nose politically, it is hard to see Treasurer Josh Frydenberg fashioning his budget around that policy setting.
Interestingly the BCA continues to call for a firm net-zero emissions target for 2050, in the name of business certainty rather than climate change zealotry. It accepts the science, but more importantly it acknowledges the trend lines globally requiring Australia to follow suit.
While organisations like the Minerals Council continue to butt heads with reality on this issue, the BCA is showing the leadership the business community more broadly needs on the subject. As are other large business organisations too.
The political agenda in Canberra has understandably been captured recently by the zeitgeist of action to improve sexual assault outcomes. So far it has focused on recognition of the problem. The next step will be reforms. But that debate in the month ahead will need to occur in tandem with the inevitable countdown to the May budget, and how the economic settings should be structured for the years ahead.
Pandemic recovery is every bit as important as pandemic management was. It is the job of government to take on board the free advice it gets from all quarters, including the BCA.
But government needs to be broad and capable: it must walk and chew gum at the same time. Just because the countdown to budget is now on the agenda is no reason for legal reforms to address sexual assaults to be put in the too hard basket.
Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University
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