Coles, Woodside and Rio Tinto bosses take aim at Australia’s excessive red tape

Some of Australia’s biggest company chiefs have taken aim at the nation’s excessive regulatory environment, saying it’s pushing up the cost of doing business and making the country lose its investment edge.

The nation’s second-biggest supermarket Coles said while it supported regulation that protected consumers and promoted competition, it must be clear and practical.

Chief executive Leah Weckert said there were opportunities to simplify regulation, pointing to more than 220 pieces of legislation that apply to the supermarket giant.

“Those (legislation) can vary across States as well, and so it creates additional complexity to manage a different set of rules in WA versus Victoria for example,” Ms Weckert told The Nightly on Tuesday.

“There are real opportunities to simplify that compliance load that is on businesses.

“The issue with compliance load is that it does put upwards pressure on prices for consumers because it’s making the cost to run the business higher.”

Meanwhile, Woodside boss Liz Westcott warned the Federal Government’s contentious domestic gas reservation proposal may scupper four new wells off Victoria.

Ms Westcott said Woodside was now assessing whether to proceed with plans to unlock up to 200 petajoules of potential Bass Strait gas.

“Technical maturity and final details of the Australian Government’s proposed domestic gas reservation scheme will influence whether we progress this opportunity to a final investment decision,” she said.

“We need to think about the long-term returns that we will gain from those investments.

“We are talking, you know, near $1 billion to make an investment in Bass Strait additional returns, and so we need line of sight for the investment framework, if you like, the regulatory space . . . all capital needs to compete.”

Ms Westcott said Woodside was firmly of the view Australia needed new gas supply.

She later told The West the oil and gas giant remained committed to working collaboratively with the Government as it worked through the gas reservation policy.

“They’ve had a lot of feedback on their first draft, and so we look forward to seeing more detail going forward,” she said.

“When we make our investments, they’re multi-year investments.

“So making sure that the policy framework really can stand the test of time, and that it supports investment alongside supporting energy security and supporting manufacturing, you know, a bipartisan approach would be a really strong way to make sure that was to happen.”

Elsewhere, Rio Tinto sounded the alarm over Australia’s fading edge in the global race for mining investment.

Rio boss Simon Trott said Australia once ranked among the miner’s most attractive jurisdictions but had lost ground over the past two decades.

He recalled Rio assessing countries against factors including industrial relations, tax policy, energy costs, the broader policy environment and geology.

“Australia ranked extremely high. It may not have been top, but it was certainly in the top quartile,” Mr Trott told The Australian Financial Review.

“I would say over 20 years that has shifted.”

Mr Trott said Australia needed to keep improving as jurisdictions fought harder for the same investment dollars.

“We’ve got to make sure we continue to reform, continue to drive productivity, continue to ensure Australia’s got competitive energy because the world is changing and it’s competitive,” he said.

“Global capital’s competitive and Australia, just as Rio needs to make sure we’re improving our own productivity, the economy around us needs to continue to drive productivity.”

But Mr Trott said business could not simply leave the productivity gig to Canberra.

“The work on productivity is not just about politics. Business needs to stand up,” he said.

On Tuesday night, Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black will tell business leaders at the association’s annual dinner that: “Where we believe policies are taking our nation in the wrong direction, the BCA will say so”.

“Australia cannot tax, regulate or redistribute its way to higher living standards,” he said, according to speech notes.