News

Business Council of Australia (BCA) chief ­executive Bran Black is set to tell Mr Albanese in a speech on Tuesday night that leaders of many major companies ‘feel we are losing our way’ economically under Labor.

Two years ago, still wearing a honeymoon glow, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese followed his address to the Business Council of Australia’s annual dinner by offering a few lucky CEOs a ride on his private plane Toto One to Canberra for the government’s jobs and skills summit.

Times have changed now – a politically battered Albo is stumbling toward an election, big business is a lot crankier with federal Labor, and the BCA is facing questions about whether its influence has become too anaemic.

Industrial relations is shaping as a major electoral battlefield with the nation’s peak business lobby warning that Australia is taking “steps backward” under Labor’s new workplace rules and growing red tape.

Labor and the Coalition are consigning younger generations to a future of higher taxes, ballooning government debt and poorer living standards, Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black will warn.

Chief executives of the nation’s biggest companies are warning Australia is “losing our way” and taking “steps backwards” under Labor, with the Business Council of Australia taking a shot at Anthony Albanese for accusing disgruntled employers of “talking Australia down”.

Environmental lawfare, unproductive workplace policies and red tape are threatening a predicted $131bn wave of resources and ­energy projects, employers have warned, as mining unions demand yearly $10,000 retention bonuses for BHP’s Pilbara workforce on top of annual 5 per cent pay rises.

At the last election, just one in eight Australians voted for the Greens.

While their 12.5 per cent was a high point, it is worth highlighting that 87.5 per cent of Australians did not support the radical left party.

Labor’s contentious environmental and workplace reforms are jeopardising a projected pipeline of more than 100 mining and energy projects worth $131 billion, warns Australian Resources and Energy ­Employer Association boss Steve Knott.

It is hard to fathom that what is now the Zone Tax Offset (ZTO), originally established in 1945, has barely evolved in more than 70 years.

Billions of dollars in gas royalties funnelled into Queensland government coffers would dry up in a decade under a Greens and Teal proposal to ban new development, new modelling for the sector reveals.

The Albanese Government is under fire from major businesses in the State for launching an assault on the resources sector on two fronts – flirting with the Greens who want a debilitating “climate trigger” as part of new environment laws, and emboldening unions in the Pilbara to take on BHP and demand massive bonuses for workers.

Is this the beginning of the return to the bad old days when cowboy unions held our country’s economy to ransom?