Anthony Albanese delivers on election pledges with deal at Jobs and Skills Summit

Anthony Albanese is projecting the image of a deal maker. Picture: Getty Images

Anthony Albanese has consolidated his claim to be delivering on Labor’s election pledges after securing a consensus from business and the unions on much-needed industrial relations reform.

On day one of the two-day Jobs and Skills Summit, the government has secured a pivotal political victory.

The Prime Minister has delivered on his promise of bringing unions and big business together in the spirit of collaboration and co-operation.

This is Albanese projecting the image of deal maker.

This was an outcome that eluded Scott Morrison two years ago when he sought to achieve a similar consensus on reform.

Just what has spurred the Business Council of Australia into a change of heart, notwithstanding some caveats, is a mystery to the Coalition and to others – although the BCA maintains it hasn’t changed its view and is still opposed to multi employer bargaining.

It’s certainly a mystery to other employer groups, such as the Australian Industry Group, which claimed multi-employer bargaining would be an economy-destroying deal because of the potential for broadscale strike action.

Anthony Albanese, left, and Treasurer Jim Chalmers at the Jobs and Skills Summit at Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday. Picture: Getty Images

Nevertheless, Albanese can claim credit for securing an agreement that until now has been elusive, and which has surpassed the low expectations he and Jim Chalmers had recently set for the summit.

This was the marker he set for success: a consensus on reform between the warring parties, with Labor the peacemaker, which underpins what Albanese and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke had envisaged for legislation before the end of the year.

It will be the most significant outcome of the summit – despite it being stitched up well beforehand.

Where any of it is deliverable for Albanese remains to be seen.

On the face of it, the in-principle industrial pact between the BCA and the ACTU empowers big unions and big business.

The cost, according to the Coalition, is the marginalisation of small businesses, which under the banner of the Council of Small Businesses Organisations of Australia has been whimpered into signing up to an agreement of its own to ensure it wasn’t irrelevant to the discussion.

As one Liberal MP said privately, it just ensured that COSBOA, which had questionable representation across the sector to begin with, will remain a voice for small business no longer.

Katy Gallagher, left, Ed Husic and Anthony Albanese arrive at the Jobs and Skills Summit at Parliament House on Thursday. Picture: Getty Images

“Put it this way: if Sally McManus likes it, then we don’t,” said one Liberal MP.

Of course, the devil is in the detail.

Burke has announced on the back of Thursday’s deal that the government now plans to do two things. It will lift the barriers to access for multi-employer bargaining. Unions like this, business like it less.

It will also legislate to streamline the better-off-overall test, which business has argued – and the unions accept – is unwieldy and no longer fit for purpose.

These two elements are central to the argument that the enterprise bargaining system is broken.

The BCA was unwilling to accept the first of these elements only 24 months ago.

It is implausible to see how the Coalition could support any legislation that codifies a sweetheart deal between big business and big unions, at the expense of small business.

This means that Albanese will have to rely on the Greens and one other to get its envisaged industrial relations reform through the Senate – just as Morrison failed in 2021 to get his IR reforms passed in full.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has already signalled he is prepared to scuttle the summit unless it produces any outcome on solutions to improving real wage growth – a central pillar of the purpose Albanese set for the summit.

So far, the only empirical evidence anyone can draw upon for multi-employer bargaining producing any wage growth at all comes from New Zealand, which is undergoing its own industrial convulsions.

Having rolled over on Labor’s 43 per cent emissions reduction target, the Greens are unlikely to play footsies with Labor over this.

There are those in government who might like to argue that because the Greens capitulated over climate change, they will do so again over wages and industrial relations reform.

But this is a foolhardy proposition.

Bandt has already implied there will be a price to pay down the track on other legislation.