Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have presided over the first day of the economic reform roundtable, with discussions focused on training, skills and worker mobility.
The Reserve Bank of Australia governor, Michele Bullock, and a slew of bureaucrats, business leaders and trade unions took part in the opening sessions of the three-day event.
The treasurer praised the quality and calibre of engagement as “outstanding”.
“It’s been a really promising and productive first day,” Chalmers said.
Here are five takeaways from day one of the event at Parliament House:
Unions want business to pay for worker training
Union leaders including the ACTU boss, Sally McManus, called for a new levy on business to pay for training for those workers who want to up skill for their jobs. The proposal would impose a 1.5% levy on businesses with a turnover of $500,000 or above.
Employers hate the idea.
The Business Council of Australia boss, Bran Black, said such new levies would be a backward step. He said the government should pay for incentives for trainee workers.
“From a business perspective, we just don’t see that taxing the business community is the right way to deliver the outcomes that Australia needs,” Black said.
The Australian Industry Group boss, Innes Willox, said the plan would hit more than 70,000 Australian businesses and raise about $4.5bn.
“We’ve done a training levy before in Australia, between 1990 and 1996. It didn’t work, it distorted the market,” he said.
“The Productivity Commission said it was distortionary and it also adds to compliance costs.”
Albanese open to big ideas
The prime minister told attendees their work would feed in to next year’s federal budget, as well as the mid-year economic update expected just before Christmas.
Despite dampening expectations of major reforms in areas such as tax, Albanese said longer term reform proposals and priorities were possible.
He nominated AI as one area requiring a longer period of work.
“I don’t expect that you will solve all of those issues in the next three days, but what you will have is ideas and input that will shape that agenda and … public discourse.
'Quick wins' needed on skills
There could be an agreement to better recognise the skills and qualifications of those who have trained overseas.
Willox said “millions of people” were in Australia doing jobs that were way below their skill level”.
“There’s recognition that the system is jammed up. [There are] people who have qualifications that are not recognised, be that migrants or be that people trying to transfer between states or even … between occupations.
“It’s really important we do get some quick wins.”
Liam O’Brien, an assistant secretary at the ACTU, agreed that recognition of prior learning and the transfer of credit for previous qualifications was a “priority”.
But hopes for a quick win look likely to be disappointed, after O’Brien said “the devil is in the detail”.
“I think it is a very tricky one for us to resolve.”
Workers should win from productivity gains too
Jennifer Westacott, a former BCA boss and the chancellor of Western Sydney University, called for the benefits of productivity gains to be shared with workers.
Speaking after taking part in a session on skills, development and mobility, she said business leaders wanted to reward workers who were doing a good job.
“It’s about creating more value from what we do,” she told Guardian Australia.
“There has to be a sense in which people feel that they’re getting the benefits.
“The best way of sharing things is high wages and we can’t get started if we are not growing at a rate that allows us to expand the economy.”
Westacott said households had weathered the cost-of-living crisis sparked by post-pandemic inflation but the next challenge was standards of living.
“If you look at the last decade, we’ve seen the lowest rate of GDP per capita in the last six decades. That’s a red line.”
AI dominating discussions
AI was a major topic of conversation.
“Something that was really positive, where there was a lot of agreement, was the sense that we do need to help the Australian community skill-up in terms of its confidence in using AI,” the independent MP Allegra Spender said.
Barney Glover, the commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia, recently described AI as a “foundational skill” that needed to be taught in schools.
The JSA in a major report found that clerical roles were among a number of white collar occupations threatened by AI, but that the technology was more likely to augment jobs, rather than replace them.
The transformative technology is sure to also loom large on day two of the roundtable, which will focus on productivity.
