Five ways the Business Council could lift Australian prosperity

One of the constants of Australian policy debate is the Business Council of Australia (BCA) rebadging its demands for fewer protections for workers, lower company tax and deregulation under a new title, shopping it to journalists and having it reported as though the big business lobby group has just offered a stunning insight into economic policy.

It seems like yesterday, but it’s 18 months since the BCA’s last effort, in August 2023, “Seize the Moment”, which came after “Living on Borrowed Time”, “A Plan for a Stronger Australia”, “Realising our full potential“ and an “Action Plan for Enduring Prosperity“.

The latest one is The Big Five Questions, which according to its blurb addresses “five critical national questions which must be answered — properly and quickly with federal action — if we are to ensure future national prosperity and maintain our living standards”. The questions relate to the “cost of living crisis for Australians”, the housing crisis, net zero by 2050 (because the BCA didn’t spend a decade sabotaging climate action and backing climate denialism), a skilled workforce, and health and care services.

No prizes for guessing what the answers to those questions turn out to be — yep, “less red tape and regulation”, “more flexible workplace laws” and “reduce the company tax rate to a globally competitive setting of 25% for all companies”, offset by an increase in the GST.

Naturally, this was all written up as though it was the first time the BCA had ever dangled such clever ideas in front of journalists, by the likes of Shane Wright at Nine (a serial offender when it comes to parading the business lobby’s shopworn wares) and head galah at the Financial Review, John Kehoe, who also has form trying to turn BCA mutton into lamb. Surely such senior journalists could palm off the task of repurposing copy from a couple of years ago to a junior?

Nonetheless, in the spirit of the BCA’s latest effort, let’s play along. In response to the “five big questions”, Crikey offers five big answers to what the BCA itself could do to lift Australia’s prosperity.

1. Tell its members to pay tax

The BCA wants a 25% tax rate? That’s a fantasy for many of its members. In 2022-23, according to the Australian Tax Office’s tax transparency data, 33 BCA members paid not a single cent in tax — off a total of $98 billion in revenue. Their ranks include serial tax dodgers like Qantas and Santos, but also Transurban, EnergyAustralia and IAG. Fifty-two BCA members paid less than 25% tax on roughly $41 billion in taxable income. How about a 25% minimum tax? That would have delivered around $4 billion a year in extra revenue in 2022-23.

2. Tell its members to stop ripping workers off

One of the frustrating things about the repetitive nature of the BCA’s demands for industrial relations reform is that journalists never note that its membership contains some of the worst industrial relations abusers in the country. In 2023, Crikey calculated that around 40% of BCA members — among them Coles, Commonwealth Bank, BHP, Qantas and Australian Unity — had engaged in some form of wage theft, with the cost to workers running into the billions. But somehow, the problem is always that industrial relations laws aren’t flexible enough.

3. Tell its members to stop ripping off consumers and small business

The BCA contains within its ranks some of the worst gougers in the country: Qantas — now a byword for shoddy service, anti-competitive practices and price-gouging — is only the leader of the pack. There’s also Coles, currently facing an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission probe into fake claims of discounts, and the Commonwealth Bank, which tried on an outrageous $3 withdrawal charge in December. Then there are insurance companies like IAG making big profits from pushing premiums up well above inflation, or McDonalds which lifted prices rapidly to offset declining sales. Or what about Downer EDI’s Spotless, currently facing a price-fixing probe?

4. Tell its members to obey the law

The BCA’s membership lists contain some of the worst corporate miscreants in the country:

• Westpac, hit with a $1.3 billion penalty in 2020 for millions of breaches of money laundering laws, including payments to child abusers.
• The Commonwealth Bank, penalised $700 million for similar offences.
• ANZ, given a quarter billion capital add-on charge after falsely inflating its bond trading figures to the government.
• Qantas, illegally sacked workers, flogged tickets to nonexistent flights and gamed landing slots to block competitors.
• Rio Tinto of Juukan Gorge fame.
• McKinsey, with the blood of thousands of American victims of the opioid crisis on its hands, not to mention its role in high-level corruption in South Africa.
• Bain, involved with Jacob Zuma’s corrupt regime in that country.
• Meta — now happily cooperating with Donald Trump in the destruction of American democracy — broke the law and was forced to pay compensation over Cambridge Analytica.
• PWC of tax scandal fame.

5. Pack up and disappear

The single biggest contribution to public policy and Australian prosperity the BCA could make would be to shut down. What has it delivered over the past decade, in spite of its persistent reheating of the same self-serving ideas?

It helped block climate action and cheered on the abolition of the one genuinely effective climate policy we’ve ever had — the Gillard government’s carbon trading scheme — leaving us desperately playing catch-up in a decarbonisation program the BCA now purports to endorse, but which it will abandon in a moment if the Coalition is returned to office. It opposes any expansion of competition policy regulation to address Australia’s most fundamental economic problem, overpowerful oligopolistic corporations (AKA its members). Its agenda to increase the GST to pay for lower taxes for its members would immiserate millions of low-income Australians, as would its goal of a return to WorkChoices-style industrial relations laws.

Would anyone — even its own members — be too concerned if the BCA simply stopped existing tomorrow?

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