Virtual Address, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
8 December 2020
PRIME MINISTER: Well, thank you very much, Ray. Thank you for that very kind acknowledgement and welcome to join you here this evening. To Nola and to James, to a very long time friend, Paul Nicolaou, and so many other friends who I see on the screen who I've known for many, many, many years. To Kate Carnell of the Small Business Ombudsman but to all of you. Can I particularly give a big shout out to all the Western Australians on the call, as I just said, to the Western Australian Chamber President, welcome back to Australia. I don't think you really ever left us in spirit, but it's great to be connected up and to be whole again as a country. Australia wasn't meant to have internal borders, we all know that, and it's been a difficult year. And I'm so pleased that as we come to the end of this year, one of the great goals I've had this year is to see our country come together again. I've understood why there has had to be separations at times. But I've got to tell you, as a Prime Minister, it has really affected me that at all times this year we weren't able to completely be connected as a country and I couldn't tell you, my Christmas wish has come true in seeing Australia come together again.
And can I also acknowledge the Ngunnawal people where I'm speaking to you from this evening, to acknowledge their elders past, present and future. And particularly this time, can I acknowledge any serving men and women who may be connected up to this call. Can I acknowledge any veterans who have served our country and say simply thank you on behalf of a very grateful nation. And could I say to all those businesses online who are here with us tonight who employ veterans, who have placed their faith in veterans, you know that by employing a veteran, your business has been greatly assisted. You know the value of them. But thank you for acknowledging them and thank you for putting your trust in them. We trusted them in uniform. We trust them today. And so many businesses around the country are rightly and are being rewarded for the trust they put in our wonderful veterans in this country.
I said at the start of the pandemic, and I've got to tell you, over the course of this year and many trips out to that courtyard, I would consider very carefully what I was going to say to the country. Never have we experienced in such a long time when what we would say is a government, not just myself, but of course, premiers and others in a position of leadership, the country was seeking guidance, support, strength and courage. And on each and every occasion, I would consider very carefully what I would be saying. Now, on that occasion, I said that Australia was a strong people, but we were about to discover just how strong we were and we are. 2020, everyone has stepped up. Families, communities, businesses, unions, governments, we've all come together. Ideology just didn't matter. Past grievances, differences, didn't matter. And I think Australians can take great pride in what we have achieved together.
I've never been more proud of my country than now as we come to the conclusion of this year. What an amazing people we are. I'm so proud. We worked to clear goals. We said we needed to save lives and save livelihoods. This is a set of objectives which were then actually taken up around the world. And it was interesting at the G20, these were repeated back to me by leaders from all of those nations. Our strong economic foundation meant we could make immediate investments in our health systems, partnering with our states. Sadly, 908 lives have been lost. This is a terrible tragedy, but it's a mortality rate that is a fraction of what we see around the rest of the world.
The strong economic supports were delivered, over half a trillion dollars. It is unthinkable, unimaginable if we took ourselves back 12 months ago to this time, more than a quarter of the size of our economy. We saved, we know, some 700,000 jobs while at the same time supporting another three and a half million. Last week, we learnt that our economy grew by 3.3 percent in the September quarter. That's the single largest increase since the mid 70s. Though, while the comeback has begun, the journey of recovery continues. So much more needs to be done. But the lesson of 2020 here and around the world, stay the course, stay vigilant. We know a vaccine is close, but that does not give us a leave pass to continue on in the way that we have during the course of this year.
Our goal as a government as we lead the comeback is jobs. And I know it's your goal, too. That is best delivered by a business-led recovery. More than eight in 10 jobs in Australia are in the private sector. And our plan has always been about businesses. I don't want government at the centre of the economy. My government does not want government at the centre of the economy. It wants enterprises. We want Australians doing what they have always done to make us the prosperous country we are. And so our plan has been about backing the plans of Australians and their futures and particularly of those who run businesses in this country. Because that's what will create jobs not just now, but into the future. Claiming new ground. I agree with the McKinsey assessment. They said in 2020, the management teams of Australians deserve to be massively proud of themselves. But 2021 really matters for setting up businesses for the next decade and we have to keep going.
That's what our JobMaker plan was all about. In the midst of the hardest times of the COVID-19 recession, we started to outline that JobMaker plan. And that was not just about as how we would recover and how we would cushion the blow, but more importantly, how we were going to build the future in responding to the challenges of COVID. In the short time, we've driven business investment and job creation, including incentivising workers to shift to faster growing sectors in the longer term, delivering the economic growth needed to create wealth to pay back the debt and respond to future economic shocks. JobMaker is about providing the policy support for rebuilding our economy and the recovery. The tax relief, temporary full expensing, the COVID loss carryback measures, which I don't need to explain to this audience. You know how important that is. Businesses that made losses through no fault of their own, who went into this into this COVID-19 recession doing well, paying tax. We became shareholders, if you like, in Australian businesses by saying take those losses, set them off against the tax you pay from your success going into this recovery, into this recession, and that will aid your recovery because we will benefit from that. Cutting the red tape, supporting the delivery of reliable, affordable energy. So important not just in our major cities and urban areas, particularly our regional areas. Investing in the major infrastructure projects, driving the uptake of digital technology, which we've seen advanced at a rapid rate.
A key part of our JobMaker plan that I talked about at the Press Club so many months ago now, it seems, was the need to deal with what happens in our workplaces. Like you, I want our workplaces to be places of cooperation and not conflict. I want them to be places of partnership, not partisanship. At the start of the pandemic, we quickly realised the rigidity of the Australian industrial relations system, not something was lost on yourselves, and that this would actually be a barrier to overcoming the jobs challenge that confronted us. The system just simply couldn't function during the COVID collapse with those rules. The flexibility wasn’t something that was desirable. It was necessary to save lives and livelihoods. And so through the JobKeeper legislation, we actually addressed that. But to the credit of all businesses, unions and government, we did adapt. We did make compromises. We did find a new way through. We did reset at a very important time. And why? Jobs. It's that simple.
Through the JobKeeper legislation, we made temporary amendments to the Fair Work Act twice. I thought it was hard getting it the first time. In fact, we came together with the ACTU. We enabled that and it smoothed its passage through the Parliament. But then I had to go back and we got there again with Christian Porter and this played a vital role in allowing businesses to survive and keep people in jobs. And on the second wave of those changes, you will recall, as businesses came off JobKeeper, remember two million Australians and more came off JobKeeper at the end of September, 450,000 businesses employed those more than two million Australians. And what we said to them is that as they stood them down, that they would continue to need flexibility in the workplace to keep people in jobs and we got that through and the best news I've had on the economy has been the fact of that graduation of 450,000 businesses out of the COVID-19 recession and the JobMaker need, where two million Australians no longer had to rely on taxpayers for income support and that businesses were beginning to stand on their own two feet again and there was a great sense of pride about that. So I'm not surprised that today we learnt that consumer confidence is at a 20 year high and that business confidence is about a two and a half year high because they have passed through the fire and they've come out the other side.
I was determined to take the opportunity COVID presented to address some of the longer term problems that we have in the system in a collaborative way. In June, we established five industrial relations working groups to look at well-known issues within the IR framework. It wasn't a talkfest. It wasn't a debate. It was a get together to get things done initiative and I have greatly appreciated, James and Ray, ACCI’s constructive engagement throughout these final negotiations. You guys turned up. Tomorrow we will be addressing into the Parliament a package of legislative reforms that will move us forward, employers and workers and our economy. The agreement making process, of course, needs fixing. We all know that. So we're simplifying the process by ensuring approvals hinge on the agreement substance rather than the technicalities or hypotheticals that hold us back. We’re clarifying the application of the better off overall test. This will ensure the overall benefits and views of employees and employers are considered in a practical and sensible way. It will provide certainty for COVID-affected sectors by extending for two years some of the temporary flexibilities in the Fair Work Act. And we're letting part-time workers more easily take on additional hours of work in these sectors at the usual rate of pay, should it be both employers or the employee's interests. Separately will ask the Fair Work Commission to prioritise reviewing a number of priority awards with a view to simplifying their operation, including consideration of loaded rates and lastly, our reforms will provide certainty, clarity and fairness around casual employment. That matters so businesses can have confidence to create more jobs.
I think in picking up the theme, everything for me as Prime Minister as we pursue our economic recovery plan, is jobs. If someone wants to work with me to create jobs, they have a seat at my table and we will work together to do just that. This is a genuine attempt that you've been engaged in with some one hundred and fifty hours of discussions in a way that provides shared benefits, and we've seen that reform is possible when the benefits to all sides are clearly understood and there are appropriate safeguards and protections. Now, you'll be the first to tell me, no doubt, that, of course, there were other things you would have liked to see, and there always is. But this was about getting stuff done. This was a time to fix things, not fight about things, and you came to the table with that spirit and Minister Porter and I are very grateful for the good faith way in which you have engaged and will continue to engage. I think we're building something, I really do, a new way of dealing with industrial relations, stepping back from the old way of partisanship and ideological battles and we're getting back to focus on what it's all about. And that is that Australians can have livelihoods.
This year we've seen also tremendous ways of change that have taken place in work and how people work, where they work, what skills they need, how they manage change. In every business, we’re experiencing change in a much higher speed. For example, 90 per cent of Australian businesses took on new technologies. Yesterday's report by the National Skills Commission examined the nature of these workforce changes and as importantly, looked at the workforce we will need in the post-COVID world. That work is going to keep changing and our challenge is to have the skills available that we will need in the future and for federal and state systems and incentives to be pointing in the same direction. This is about anticipating the future and planning for as best we can. It's what ACCI has been saying for many years. So I hope you're encouraged by what we're doing.
This year through the National Cabinet, we delivered the JobTrainer fund to provide over 300,000 free or low cost training places in the areas of identified need. All states and territories have signed up. Training is already available and viable in Queensland and Northern Territory, not too far off. As well, we’re also supporting on the job training and backing all those businesses that are employing workers as they build up their skills. Early on, we stepped in with wage support for Australian businesses that retained their apprentices and trained trainees by paying half their wages. So far, this has supported over 100,000 apprentices and trainees, including 20,000 brickies, chippies and joiners, 50,000 electricians, 10,000 plumbers, 5,000 hairdressers and 8,000 automatic mechanics and electricians. We've also extended wage support to employers taking on a new apprentice or trainee with an additional $1.2 billion to deliver 100,000 new apprenticeships. This is the right decision given the data of the Skills Commission that 48 per cent of job losses this year were young people. The good news is the number of apprentices and trainees in training contracts recovering to above where it was in March. We're also working with the states and territories to deliver a standard VET system through longer-term reform. I'm pleased that the National Cabinet has agreed to work towards a new national skills agreement by next August. We're meeting on Friday, the first time in person since that day back in mid-March, and I can tell you we're very serious about working together to get this skills package right. There's a lot of goodwill and good faith going into this. We're really directing our attention to it.
On other topics, too, like mental health reform and things like that and there's been a few brickbats that've gone to the National Cabinet this year. But I can tell you, at the end of the day, things should be judged on their successes and their outcomes and the National Cabinet this year has ensured that we've been able to manage so many difficult issues. And while there are some disagreements, the fact that we can pull together a National Skills Agreement in just over a couple of weeks when normally, in my experience, that would have taken several years, just shows how we learnt to do things so much better as a Federation during the course of this year.
I want to pay special tribute to the efforts of Australian small businesses - determined, resilient, flexible and passionate. They put their head down and they just kept going. Of course we have stood with them because combined, they are our biggest employers. And backing them in with JobKeeper, the JobMaker hiring credit, the cash flow bonus scheme which has provided over $34 billion to help around 800,000 small and medium businesses stay afloat. The small and medium sized enterprise guarantee scheme, supporting up to $40 billion of lending increase. Time-limited tax incentives, including the full expensive measures and temporary loss carryback I mentioned earlier. Expanding access to a range of small business tax concessions, helping distressed small businesses restructure and improving the digital capability. All of this backing in the confidence of small businesses.
This year has been one of the hardest in living memory. We all know that. As we look around the world, we can't be naive about the prospects for a fast global recovery. But here in Australia, we have one of the best records of any country in the world. It's something you can all be pretty proud of, incredibly proud of. Our comeback will take time. There is cause for optimism. Confidence grows. Our JobMaker plan is about our recovery. It's about our rebuilding. And it's about the future. It's about building an economy that's more advanced, more adaptive and more creative and importantly, more resilient than ever. It's about continuing our wonderful Australian success story.
So as we come to the end of what has been a very difficult year, I'm full of hope. I'm full of beans about 2021. I'm very excited about it. I'm excited to see what's happening in my country, as I'm sure you are, too. I'm totally energised by the tremendous resilience and spirit of Australians and as we go into Christmas, I pray that we will have a great time of blessing amongst our families. And as we look forward to 2021, I know it's going to be a happy New Year. Thank you very much for your kind attention.
