Back in August, Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger slammed the Business Council of Australia (BCA) as irrelevant, arrogant and hopeless and claimed that it should be abolished:
“The BCA doesn’t want to campaign, it should not have to campaign because the integrity of its policy decisions should speak for themselves,” she said.
“What a hopeless contribution. No wonder the BCA are in a world of pain because they’re an irrelevant organisation and they may as well wind up, frankly,” he said.
“This is an appalling contribution. If you want to know why these people have such a hopeless record of failure…the greatest evidence of that is this comment.”
Mr Kroger said the Coalition had taken to the last election “some of the most business-friendly policies I have seen in my lifetime” but “the BCA was missing in action for that whole campaign”.
Today, the Liberal’s war with the BCA has escalated, with a party powerbroker pushing to establish a pro-business enterprise unit within the Menzies Research Centre. From The Australian:
Tom Harley, the chairman of the Liberal-aligned Menzies think tank, said a policy vacuum in Australia needed to be filled, providing an alternative to the BCA, which was often hamstrung by a diverse membership with conflicting interests.
Mr Harley, a former federal Liberal vice-president and former BHP Billiton executive, said that dissatisfaction with the BCA stemmed from its track record of proposing policies that were “theoretically right but almost impossible to implement” and the tendency for its members, chief executives of 126 of the nation’s biggest companies, to shun public policy debate.
It seems the BCA is coping flak from all sides at the moment. Back in July, The Australia Institute’s (TAI) chief economist, Richard Denniss, penned a stinging critique of the organisation, arguing that its recent poor record showed it does not deserve a seat at the policy table:
Arguing that the nation’s number one priority is to deliver tax cuts for big business looks as self-serving as it is. Playing on workers’ fears about job security helped destroy the carbon tax and the mining tax, but those tactical wins have become strategic disasters. Having convinced voters that they are entitled to secure work, those same voters have no faith that the BCA or Liberal Party are committed to delivering it. Whoops…
If the BCA were serious about reform they would take economics more seriously. The carbon tax wasn’t a “wrecking ball” for the economy; it was sensible reform. The mining tax wasn’t a fundamental threat to the mining industry; it was an opportunity to manage the macroeconomics of a mining boom. And a royal commission into the banks isn’t a source of instability, but a prudent opportunity for oversight of those who manage $1.5 trillion of other people’s money. But the BCA simply rages against anything its most powerful members would rather avoid.
Let’s be honest, the BCA’s influence on the public was always limited given it’s very obviously a lobby group for the big end of town. Its rabid support of the company tax cut is evidence of this.
That said, why would the public listen to a big business lobby within the Menzies Research Centre if its raison d’etre is only to support the Coalition?
Ultimately, the best way to make a positive impression is to actually pretend to care about the public good, not engage in partisan hysteria.
Because any reform proposal that puts the interests of big business ahead of ordinary Australians will be widely viewed as unfair and is doomed to fail.
