This opinion article by Business Council of Australia Chief Executive Bran Black and Council of Small Business Organisations Australia Chief Executive Officer Luke Achterstraat was published on The Australian Financial Review on 22 April 2025.

On Wednesday, the Business Council and the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia will host the Business Debate between Treasurer Jim Chalmers and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.

Australia is at a critical juncture, facing long-term challenges that require evidence-based and equally long-term solutions, not just promises that represent short-term sugar hits.

We need policies that set our nation up for the future, and for the first time in this election campaign, businesses of all shapes and sizes will be able to put their concerns and their aspirations directly to our economic leaders.

When we do, we want to hear substantive plans to solve the economic challenges facing our country.

What’s clear in any economic reinvention for Australia is that small and large businesses must be at the centre of our collective effort.

The trade between us is worth about $700 billion a year. That’s phenomenal and indispensable economic activity. Together, we paid more than $140 billion into our national coffers through company tax alone in the past year.

The job of governments isn’t just to clip the ticket on this business activity, but to actively support and encourage it to grow.

We have seen some positive efforts from both major parties to encourage businesses, but there is so much more we need to do if we are to sustain and grow this important contribution in the face of so many challenges.

This goal will be at the heart of Wednesday’s debate, and our business leaders will be pressing both the treasurer and shadow treasurer for their perspectives.

Businesses in Australia – from the smallest cafe to the largest global exporter – are navigating rising costs and an increasingly uncertain global environment. The recent furore with respect to US tariffs is the latest and most visible indicator of this.

In this uncertainty, it becomes all the more important that we control the things we can control. One of these things is the strength of our private sector.

Six out of every seven Australian jobs are in the private sector. Businesses large and small contribute around 80 per cent of our national economic output and provide much of the tax revenue that funds our essential services. Regional, rural and remote Australia relies disproportionately on small businesses but also major projects that create supply chain opportunities.

Simply put, when business thrives, Australia thrives. And we need our businesses to thrive if we are to face the existing, and the coming, challenges with confidence.

They are significant. Our productivity, which is the currency that pays for our quality of life, is at a six-decade low. The Reserve Bank of Australia has made it clear that only by addressing this can we sustainably slow inflation while raising real wages.

We have the third least competitive company tax rate in the OECD and are heavily reliant on a proportionally declining base of Australians paying income tax.

That means an intergenerational time bomb in the changing demographics of Australia, with fewer future taxpayers to pay for the services Australians expect and deserve.

These are among the many challenges our politicians must tackle in this election and beyond, with actions that can start now to deliver decades-long national dividends.

And given the economic contribution of our business community, it’s clear that “growing the pie” through private sector growth must be at the heart of that strategy.

While business investment has risen slightly in recent months, it’s still close to 30-year lows as a share of our GDP. To address this, we must invest in policy that makes Australia the best place to do business and increase productivity and living standards.

We need to see policy that addresses the regulatory red tape that shackles business. That means a substantial, whole-of-government, ease-of-doing-business agenda.

We need leadership on our taxation challenges that provides for a sustainable and affordable system moving forward.

This requires providing certainty on policies such as the instant asset write-off, so small businesses can invest confidently. Similarly, a broad-based investment allowance would improve the investment outlook for larger businesses.

We need meaningful and structural budget repair, which makes potentially unpopular decisions but works hard to take Australians on the journey to accepting them. Budget rules would be part of this solution.

We need policy that restores a sense of balance to our industrial relations system, instead of stacking it in every possible way against the job creator.

With larger businesses reporting that workplace laws have become overly complex, think of the mum-and-dad businesses navigating this alone, with minimal or no support.

And we need policy that cuts approval times for new projects to help attract business to our shores.

What the business community hopes to see more than anything is a debate based on policies that support growth, are evidence-based and provide real solutions – a debate that gives business confidence that we can be at the heart of our recovery.