With economic growth sliding to just 0.2 per cent in the June quarter,the government is fighting Opposition Leader Peter Dutton over the cost of living while facing business fears that workplace law and environmental regulations are adding to costs.
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Albanese used his speech to the Business Council of Australia dinner in Sydney on Tuesday night to warn the company chiefs that he was standing against Coalition proposals that would hurt them,without naming policies such as Dutton’s push for laws to force Coles and Woolworths to sell assets.
“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,” Albanese said.
“We’ve stood up for some of Australia’s biggest employers,when others have attacked you for holding a view different to their own.
“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.”
Albanese also pushed back against the idea that he was too timid to embark on genuine economic reform,citing the government’s two budget surpluses,its savings with the National Disability Insurance Scheme and its aged care plan.
“Proof that economic reform is not confined to a vanished golden age – it remains our challenge to meet and our opportunity to seize,” he said.
Business Council president Geoff Culbert,a former chief executive at Sydney Airport,repeated the peak group’s warnings about higher costs from workplace laws and red tape.
“We have to resist the cycle of populist short-term thinking,” he said.
“We have to be prepared to face into and tackle the hard issues that will define our future. And the scapegoating of business has to stop.”
Employment Minister Murray Watt will use a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday to warn of greater conflict in workplace relations if the Coalition took power.
“As we approach the next election,this choice – between workplace co-operation or conflict – will become much starker,because it underpins the choice Australians will have,about the wages and employment policies our country adopts,” Watt says in a draft of his speech.
“It’s why workplace relations will be a key battleground at the next election and Australians will have a clear choice to make.
“We know that,if he’s elected,Peter Dutton will use conflict and fear to divide Australians and turn back the clock on workplace rights.”
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With the Coalition vowing to repeal large parts of the Labor workplace regime,the government is warning that this would mean casual workers would lose their right to seek to become permanent employees.
The government is also warning that people would lose the “right to disconnect” that currently allows them to refuse to take work calls outside their agreed working hours.
But Coalition workplace spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said the Business Council’s warnings showed there was “despair in the business community” and that employers were “going backwards” under Labor.
A standard,half-Senate election is due by May 17.