This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Business Council of Australia has condemned federal parliament’s inability to settle energy policy as arguably the “largest failure in public policy” for years.

The president of the BCA, Grant King, said Australia had lurched from one extreme to the other in energy and environment policy over the past four terms of parliament, two under Labor and two under Coalition governments.

He condemned the Morrison government’s proposal to break up electricity companies that engage in price gouging as the latest example of policy failure, saying it would do nothing to end policy uncertainty and inconsistency.

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He said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission itself had called the policy “extreme”.

“This ignores all the other actions and recommendations recommended by the government’s own experts that could be done now to help drive down electricity bills,” King said.

“To place the blame on energy companies today for the high price of electricity is a blatant attempt to shift blame for the failure of public policy in this area over many years.”

King was speaking to the Sydney Institute on Monday evening, in a speech titled “Why growth matters”.

He told the audience the BCA was concerned about the prevailing pessimism in Australia, saying it was strange to have so much negative sentiment when there were so many positive economic and social indicators.

However, he accepted there had been a “significant loss of trust” in institutions in recent years and this was contributing to the national mood.

“If there is a central theme to this loss of trust it is the egregious abuse of power and privilege by all institutions – be they business, government, unions, media, not-for-profits and other nongovernment organisations,” he said.

“In my current role at the BCA I talk to many of our business leaders and I believe they know that business has to win back the trust and confidence of the community and are taking the necessary steps to do this.”

King said the BCA still believed that Australia ought to reduce the tax rate on all businesses – large and small – to 25%, because it would help the country’s economic growth.

“We were deeply involved in the debate about the reduction in the corporate tax rate. The parliament chose to condemn Australia to a corporate tax rate at a globally uncompetitive level,” he said.

“I believe we were winning the debate about the merits of the matter. However, the debate was shifted by those that opposed it, from whether the reduction was merited to whether it was deserved – an argument too easy to make because of the decline in confidence and trust in business.

“It will ultimately be a tragedy for us all if the policies we need for business to make its contribution to a better future are rejected not because they are unnecessary but are somehow not deserved,” he said.

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He attacked the push by the Australian Council of Trade Unions to reintroduce industry-wide bargaining.

He said Australia needed a modern workplace relations system with a universal safety net that spelled out basic rights and conditions such as the minimum wage, leave and entitlements, and a fair and transparent process for dismissal.

“[But] we cannot return to industry-wide bargaining,” he said.

“Entrenching industry wide agreements that imposes the same standards on all companies irrespective of their needs, is not only unworkable but more likely to destroy jobs than create them,” he said.

He said the BCA would continue to argue for open and competitive markets, free trade, job creation and limited government, because those ideas anchored continuity in policy making and lead to economic growth.