BCA annual dinner: Geoff Culbert warns populist business bashing needs to stop

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BCA annual dinner: Geoff Culbert warns populist business bashing needs to stop

*********** companies have never faced “greater headwinds” amid “dangerous rising anti-business” sentiment, according to the peak industry body, as the Prime Minister insists his government is “proudly pro-business”.

Business Council of Australia president Geoff Culbert used his speech at the BCA’s annual dinner on Tuesday to warn politicians that “scapegoating of business has to stop”.

“There is now a material and concerning disconnect between the negative way in which business is perceived, and the positive value it creates for Australia,” he said.

“Somewhere along the way, business has become a convenient scapegoat for all manner of challenging issues, and it’s coming from all sides of politics.

“It may be popular to bash big business, but in doing so we are making success ****** in this country — and that is not consequence free.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in his address at the dinner, which included the heads of the country’s top companies, said while it was inevitable government and business would have differences of opinion, he did not believe disagreements defined or diminished their interactions.

“We are proudly pro-business and pro-worker. And we don’t see this as a point of tension, we see it as a matter of logic,” he said.

Mr Culbert also said he was concerned about the state of democracy in Western countries and warned while respectful and robust debate was essential, it had to be used to come up with long-term solutions.

“We cannot let ourselves get trapped in an endless cycle of short-term thinking and blame-shifting,” he said.

“This only serves to undermine the public’s trust and respect in the institutions that set the agenda and direction of the nation.

“It creates a wedge that gets exploited by ********* interests and it weakens the ability for all of us to argue for meaningful long-term reform.”

His comments followed BCA chief executive Bran ******’s speech, where he said the nation was “taking incremental — but noticeable — steps backwards” instead of making progress.

Mr ****** called for bold policy steps to deal with the looming fiscal burden that would be shouldered by future generations if nothing changed.

He and Mr Culbert both decried “red herring” populist policies, naming Labor’s IR changes, the Coalition’s forced divestiture plans, and the Greens’ climate trigger demands.

Mr Albanese said he and Labor had stood up for Australia’s biggest employers when others sought to ******* them.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

He urged business leaders to keep advancing their agendas, saying a healthy democracy had room for everyone’s views.

“Economic and social change is not delivered via ultimatum; it’s built by consensus and strengthened by the mandate of the people,” he said.

Mr Albanese also defended his Government’s industrial relations changes, which Mr ****** and Mr Culbert both called out for significantly impacting businesses across the country.

Mr Culbert said the BCA would support ideas regardless of which side of politics those ideas came from, while also arguing strongly against any short-term, populist policies.

“We have backed in the government on its gas strategy, which we think is a common sense approach in the long-term national interest,” he said.

“We also backed in the government in respect to skilled migration and their cyber strategy. We applaud the bipartisan approach announced last week with respect to aged care reform.

“At the same time, we’ll continue to argue strongly against counter-productive IR changes. We’ll argue against forced divestiture. We argued against climate triggers, and we’ll continue to argue against self-destructive over-taxation.

“We genuinely believe these will hurt the long-term success of the country.”

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