Australia has ‘lost pioneering spirit’: outgoing BCA president

Australia has ‘lost pioneering spirit’: outgoing BCA president

Published 28 March 2014 11:09

Michael Smith

The Business Council of Australia’s ­outgoing president, Tony Shepherd, warns the nation has become “boring and conservative” as it ­abandons its pioneering spirit and loses its competitive edge.

Shepherd also used his farewell speech to call for the former Labor ­government to be held to account for its budgetary decisions, and said the ­biggest challenge to the Coalition’s fiscal targets was getting the community to accept the need for reform.

“We have lost some of our pioneering spirit and become boring and conservative,” Shepherd said in his final address to the BCA on Thursday night.

“We constantly ask ‘Why?’, rather than ‘Why not?’. Our businesses tend to be driven by the quarterly report, and some fund managers regard 12 months as long term.”

Telstra chairman Catherine Livingstone was voted in as BCA president for a two-year term on Thursday. Her appointment was flagged in The ­Australian Financial Review this week.

Shepherd, who chairs the ­government’s commission of audit, extended his two-year term last year by six months.

He warns the biggest challenge to achieving the audit’s term of reference for a surplus of 1 per cent of GDP by 2024 was community education.

“The community must understand the very real risk of us becoming a country of ‘haves and have nots’ and leaving our children and grandchildren to sort out the mess,” Shepherd says.

He singles out 13 per cent youth unemployment as a major concern.

He says he was most concerned ­Australia was losing its competitiveness on many fronts, despite its rich natural resources and highly ­educated workforce.

He says he looks forward to the publication of the commission of audit’s report as Labor should be held to account for the budgetary decisions it made.

He says fixing Australia’s fiscal ­position was the key to giving the ­country a platform for growth, and looking at tax reform and looking at infrastructure spending.

Livingstone, who has been chairman of Telstra since 2009, is a former chief executive of hearing implant manufacturer Cochlear and a former chairman of the CSIRO. She is the first woman to become BCA president.

“She is very considered, quietly determined, has a very sharp intellect with a capacity to focus on the detail and the big issues, which will be good for Australia,” former Coalition minister and ANZ Banking Group senior managing director Warwick Smith says. “Ego doesn’t visit her, confidence does, and that is what the nation needs.”

Shepherd was a vocal leader of the group which represents the ­country’s top 100 chief executives at a time when Labor fell out with the ­business community over unpopular policy decisions. The BCA last year released a policy agenda designed to address concerns around taxation, industrial relations and energy.

Shepherd said on Thursday that Australia had lost its appreciation for entrepreneurs with imagination like Rupert Murdoch, Frank Lowy, Andrew Forrest, the Pratt family and Kerry Stokes.

He says it had struck him while working on the audit that Australia had been held back in recent years by a lack of imagination in policymaking and business.

He says Australia could not have ­sustained economic growth with a weak budget and it was time to correct the fiscal position.

“If we do it structurally and sustainably and in tandem with broader economic reforms, that’s what will give us the platform for growth,” he says.

Shepherd also warned a hostile Senate remained a major challenge for the new government.