Corporate leaders hit back over climate attack

Big business in Australia claims to have gone its own way in supporting action on climate change and social policy issues – at a cost to its traditional relationship with the Liberals.

ANZ Bank chief executive Shayne Elliott. Picture: Kym Smith

Big business in Australia claims to have gone its own way in supporting action on climate change and social policy issues – at a cost to its traditional relationship with the Liberal Party – after frustration with years of leadership instability and policy uncertainty.

In the wake of Peter Dutton’s claim the Liberals were no longer the natural party of big business, corporate executives hit back on Tuesday, telling The Australian they needed clarity on government policy which had been missing.

They disputed the Liberal leader’s assertion they had failed to “speak out” on economic issues such as industrial relations, tax reform and wages, saying a lack of will had come from the government side.

Mr Dutton, in his first comments as the Liberals’ new leader, said his party had become “estranged” from corporate Australia and he intended to focus more on small business and “the forgotten people” in the nation’s suburbs.

He claimed some chief executives were now closer to parties other than the Liberals, and criticised an “absence of strong voices that we would have seen a decade ago within the last generation of business leaders”.

The Liberal leader’s criticism – effectively labelling big business “too woke” amid fears of attacks on Twitter – has ruffled feathers among several corporate chiefs.

ANZ Bank chief executive Shayne Elliott said on Tuesday that big business was already “in the suburbs” because the 20,000 people who worked for his bank lived there, and most customers came from the suburbs.

“I think the reality is that big business has been remarkably supportive of governments of various flavours over the years, because business is about being pragmatic and getting on with things,” Mr Elliott said. “What business wants is clarity – they want clarity in direction, they want clarity in the rules of the game, and businesses have learned to operate in almost any environment.”

The Business Council of Australia, formerly a Liberal Party bastion under former president, mining chief and Melbourne establishment figure Hugh Morgan, has attracted party criticism recently for responding positively to Labor’s climate change policy.

But BCA-member companies among Australia’s top 100 corporates say they have had no choice except to forge their own path on climate change after repeated policy reversals by the Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments which had created uncertainty over carbon emissions targets and a carbon tax.

Former BCA president Tony Shepherd, who was Transfield’s chief executive and headed the Abbott government’s Commission of Audit, said he did not agree with setting a divide between big and small business. He also said the ­operational environment for business had been made difficult with so many changes to government climate-change policy.

“I think it’s fair to say we have found it extremely difficult in Australia to get an integrated national policy on climate change, so we have each state going in its own ­direction, we have the commonwealth going in its own direction.”

Former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett said he did not have an issue with big business, but he did believe the BCA’s agenda had become unrepresentative.

He said the BCA’s advocacy on climate change was ahead of its constituency and the wider community because it had failed to ­articulate how the transition to zero emissions could occur in terms of its impact on society.

“I think Peter will be a very good leader, he has the experience needed to lead his party, but I don’t have that issue with big business or small business,” he said.