BCA annual dinner: PM tells CEOs he’s ‘proudly pro-business’ as they battle IR laws & climate trigger concerns

Anthony Albanese has stared down Australia’s top CEOs as they continue to battle on several fronts including industrial relations laws and climate trigger concerns, claiming he is “proudly pro-business” and “pro-worker”.

The Prime Minister used his speech at the Business Council of Australia’s annual dinner on Tuesday, which included the heads of the country’s top companies, to say that while it was inevitable both sides would have “occasional” differences of opinion, the disagreements hadn’t defined or diminished the engagement between government and business.

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

His comments came after BCA president Geoff Culbert used his speech at the dinner to warn politicians that business bashing had 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, andit’s coming from all sides of politics.

“It may be popular to bash big business, but in doing so we are making success taboo in this country — and that is notconsequence free.”

Mr Albanese argued that over the past two years his government had stood against some “pretty extreme” anti-business policies put forward by members of the crossbench and the Opposition.

“We’ve stood up for some of Australia’s biggest employers, when others have attacked you for holding a view different to their own,” 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.

“One of the many healthy things about our democracy is that there’s room for everyone’s views. Equally, in a democracy, those ideas have to stand on their merits and withstand public scrutiny.”

Mr Culbert also said in his speech 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 minority interests and it weakens the ability for all of us to argue for meaningful long-term reform.”

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

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

Mr Culbert also 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.

“At the same time, we’ll continue to argue strongly against counterproductive IR changes,” he said.

“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.”.