Exasperated business leaders concede Australians are increasingly uninterested or unconvinced by their campaigns on tax and economic policy, forcing them to consider new, unconventional strategies including mobile game adverts to reach voters in the face of an unyielding and dismissive government.
As peak bodies prepare to ramp up the fight against the tax package Anthony Albanese vowed not to amend with any “big changes”, industry leaders told The Australian that despite “white-hot anger” across businesses, the government had offered limited consultation and resisted any meaningful “negotiation”.
Business figures admitted they needed “to do a better job convincing people” of the necessity of businesses’ success to everyday Australians’ living standards and find ways to cut through a market increasingly dominated by influencers and podcasts.
A day after the Prime Minister poured cold water on the likelihood of significantly changing his tax policies, more than 30 chief executives from the nation’s biggest companies and peak bodies met on Friday to wargame their next move.
In a sombre assessment of realities facing his sector, Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said his organisation and the broader industry were “not in a position” to have their views cut through to governments and voters because “we haven’t got the public space for these types of arguments”.
“I firmly believe that when business succeeds, Australia succeeds. This means higher wages, more jobs and more tax revenue that funds the services Australians rely on every day,” he told The Australian. “But I’m not sure how much the message that when business succeeds, Australia succeeds resonates. We need to do a better job convincing people that business needs to do well to provide people a job and pay for the services they want. Those are the kinds of connections we need to spend more time and more energy establishing.”
He said there had been long conversation developing and now “moving forward quite quickly” in the Alliance of Industry Associations, which has been meeting fortnightly following the federal budget, on how to better operate together. “Our alliance of more than 30 business groups is tired of simply resisting change that’s bad. What we want to focus on is creating the public space that enables conversations about change that’s good – that sets us all up for the future,” he said.
“We want to have an honest conversation about what it takes to generate growth, attract investment and support rising living standards, rather than tax changes that take us all backwards.”
While Mr Black held back details on how the alliance would overhaul traditional campaigning strategies, other industry leaders revealed they had already begun exploring new avenues to get their messages across.
Master Builders Australia chief executive Denita Warn said her organisation had moved beyond relying on social media and moved into the mobile gaming world. “We don’t have millions and millions of dollars to spend on campaigning but since the 2019 election, but we’ve done very targeted and predominantly digital campaigns,” she said.
“It’s not just virtual media … it’s advertising in games and so on where we’ve been able to get that cut through. So if you play a game on your phone and you want more credits, then you’re going to watch an ad and we’ve used that type of media.
“For us it’s about looking at the demographics of games, of shows that are watched and …. we overlay that with federal electorate boundaries that then enables us to do that targeted digital campaigning beyond social media.”
The pivot by some peak bodies to find more innovative ways of campaigning comes amidst frustration with the dominance of new voices in new media and podcasts such as Punters Politics.
Launched just two years ago by former high school teacher Konrad Benjamin, 35, the podcast now has over one million followers and subscribers across YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram, while its founder has become an increasingly visible figure in federal politics and asked to appear before parliamentary inquiries.
Mr Black said an overload in the sheer number of voices and sources of information meant it had become more difficult than ever to communicate to Australians the looming fallout of Labor’s economic policies.
“There are so many voices out there though. It’s harder for our messages to get cut through. I’d like to believe that facts win, that logic will win. But that’s not necessarily the case,” he said. “We need to look at how we can be more persuasive and tell stories a bit differently so people have a greater appreciation of the fundamental role of business and how it makes lives better day to day.”
Amid the fierce criticism of the budget, Labor has been backed in by the nation’s biggest unions, such as the ACTU, and expects to pass its contentious tax package with the support of the Greens.
While vowing to continue advocating against the tax package regardless of Mr Albanese’s signal that Labor would stand firm on measures as currently proposed, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar admitted he and his colleagues were not at the negotiating table.
“We’re in a process now. It’s consultations, it’s not negotiations,” he told The Australian. “So, yes, they’re consulting, but at the end of the day, government will need to make a decision. So, we don’t directly control votes in the Senate. We can make our representations to government, we can try to convince them. We can do the same to those in the Senate, that’s what we do. At the end of the day, the government … makes the decision and it will have to live with that decision.”
Ms Warn echoed the sentiment and said the MBA “acknowledged that we were having problems getting cut through with the government”.
“We weren’t getting the meetings that we wanted (despite) … the multitude of requests that we all made to have a frank conversation with negative gearing and capital gains tax,” she said.
Council of Small Business Organisations Australia chief executive Skye Cappuccio said while there were things announced in budget the organisation “would have liked to have seen more extensive consultation process”, engagement with government had improved after it unveiled its measures.
Ms Cappuccio agreed it was difficult to explain “complex tax and economic policy” to average Australians, but believed there had been “a delay in broader population understanding implication of policies for them”, which would soon come to a head.
AI Group warned Jim Chalmers the anger amongst the business sector was turning “white hot”, fuelled by comments from Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson that while she was aware of the “sensitives” over tax changes, “revenue has to come from somewhere”. “The government needs to realise that business anger from the corner cafe to large innovative manufacturers and constructors has turned white hot. After being glibly told by the Treasury secretary this is all about revenue raising, those businesses now fully understand the wealth, investment and employment destruction it will cause if enacted,” AI Group chief executive Innes Willox said.
“The government should take a breath and consult in good faith. Sectoral carve outs favouring one business over another will simply be seen by those who miss out as discriminatory and a signal to pack up.
“We will reaching out again to the government this week with practical and pragmatic suggestions on how they can get back on track to deliver what we all hoped would be outcomes in the interests of enhancing the entire economy.”
Ms Warn indicated the MBA would pursue the only avenue left open by a government that appeared increasingly unwilling to consider any substantive changes to its policies.
“We have always taken the approach that if government is not listening, then we will go to the general population, we will talk to our membership directly through campaigning to get them to have a better understanding of why we’re frustrated with governments,” she said.
“We made a decision if we did have property tax cuts announced in federal budget to have our modelling team ready to go. We went and analysed the impact of the cost of rents … we analysed how many more homes may or may not be in the market.
“For us, it was about yes, how can we talk to our membership, but equally we’ve also got to inform the community.”
Extracted in full from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/australias-top-bosses-wargame-new-strategy-to-fight-governments-tax-package/news-story/90d424c3d687302fa94232db00c308a9
