Event: Business Council Chief Executive Bran Black opening remarks to Business Debate between Treasurer Jim Chalmer and Shadow Treasurer

**Check Against Delivery**

Bran Black, BCA Chief Executive: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to The Business Debate.

Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet and paying my respects to Elders past and present.

Today’s event is an important conversation about Australia’s economic future, and it’s a privilege for the Business Council of Australia to co-host it with our colleagues at the Council of Small Business Organisations.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are just one day into early voting, and less than two weeks from polling day.

This debate marks the first time we’ll see the Treasurer and the Shadow Treasurer go head-to-head before an audience of small and large businesses.

I take this opportunity to thank Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor for accepting our invitation to be here.

Today’s debate comes at a pivotal moment in a much broader sense.

All businesses in Australia are navigating an increasingly uncertain global environment.

The recent and ongoing challenge of negotiating US tariff policy is the most acute demonstration of this point.

At the same time, Australia’s changing demographics present a great intergenerational challenge, with proportionately fewer workers, and proportionately more retirees living longer and with increasingly costly care needs.

Meanwhile, our average productivity growth over the last decade was the lowest in six decades, and it’s declined 1.2% over the past year.

And I want to take a moment here to note what we mean by ‘productivity’ and why it’s important.

It’s not about making everyone work harder. It’s about how we deliver more outputs with the same or less inputs.

And it’s critical because productivity growth and real wages growth is symbiotic, and that makes the linkage between productivity growth and our collective national prosperity iron-clad.

Ladies and gentlemen, both major parties can speak to their policies implemented or proposed which have increased or which would increase national productivity.

At the same time, both parties have implemented or proposed policies that disincentivise investment and make it harder to run a business.

We know both parties have broad constituencies that necessitate balancing many different and often competing interests.

However, if our overarching national objective is improving quality of life from one generation to the next, we think it’s important to remember that:

• Businesses large and small contribute around 80 per cent of our country’s economic output.

• Six of every seven Australian jobs are in the private sector.

• And businesses and the people they employ contribute more than half a trillion dollars in taxation to Commonwealth coffers.

Simply put, when businesses – of all shapes and sizes – succeed, Australia succeeds.

And so what’s clear is that the many and concerning challenges Australia faces right now necessitate a broader and more ambitious reform agenda that will meaningfully support Australian businesses to invest and to grow.

An agenda that best positions us to control those things that are genuinely within our power to control – amidst so much global uncertainty – by backing businesses to drive national prosperity.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s why we’ve asked both of our speakers today to put forward their plans for Australia’s long-term economic future, and for how they intend to empower Australian businesses to deliver on it.

And so welcome once again to the Business Debate – and I’ll now hand you back to Laura.