The Business Council fiddles while Australia burns
Despite claims of climate leadership from scores of companies including ANZ, BHP, CommBank, NAB and Suncorp, Australia’s largest companies continue to fund the climate policy wreckers at the Business Council of Australia (BCA). The BCA’s policy wrecking was on display again this week, as CEO Jennifer Westacott outlined the BCA’s policy agenda during a keynote speech to the National Press Club.
This was Westacott’s first speech since Tim Reed took up the position of BCA president from former Origin Energy CEO Grant King. There has been some suggestion that appointing Tim Reed — who wears t-shirts and comes from a tech/small business oriented company (MYOB) — might indicate some sort of positive generational change for the BCA.
But there was nothing new in Westacott’s speech on Tuesday.
She addressed themes we’ve heard time and time again from the BCA over the last few years:
- ‘Red tape’ is bad
- “Modernising” Australia’s workplace relations system
- Environmental approvals are taking too long
- Gas is an “obvious” transition fuel
Fairly predictable stuff.
Regional communities
Westacott spent a large amount of time discussing investment in regional communities. Given that countless regional communities have been suffering from weeks of bushfires or years of drought, Westacott’s failure to discuss the climate crisis does those communities a huge disservice.
‘Red tape’
On the day Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer was forced to resign due to the bank’s 23 million breaches of anti-money laundering regulations, the BCA called for the loosening of ‘red tape’. Westacott says that she is regularly asked how ‘the grip of red tape could be loosened because it is bogging down their ability to run their businesses and hire more people’.
“We are doing a campaign on red tape and we are calling for people to give us their examples. When I speak to people they say ‘Jennifer, it costs me heaps just to put somebody on.’”
The BCA’s anti-red tape campaign — Red Tape Hurts Us All — mentions licensing, payroll tax, restrictions on trading hours, approval processes, and what it calls ‘uncompetitive regulatory standards’.
Given the raft of governance scandals that continue to plague the banking sector, the countless examples of wage theft from the BCA’s own members including Wesfarmers and Woolworths, the deaths of miners, dodgy building certifications, the horrific abuses in aged care, etc, it seems an odd time to pitch for less red tape.
Workplace relations
We’ve previously discussed the BCA’s advocacy on workplace relations here. Needless to say, when the BCA calls for reform of workplace relations, it often means two things: reducing wages and making it easier to sack people. In her speech this week, Westacott pushed for life-of-project enterprise agreements: meaning that enterprise agreements run for the life of a greenfield project, rather than the current maximum of four years. In other words, those working on a mine that has a project life of 30 years could have their wages frozen for that entire time. The Minerals Council of Australia also supports the proposal.
Environmental approvals
Westacott claimed that environmental approvals for large projects were taking too long, and criticised the appeals system for a ‘lack of common sense’:
“[The system] allows a small group of people in a completely different part of the country to disrupt and stop a major project that has absolutely nothing to do with them.”
Westacott is probably referring to groups opposing large new fossil fuel projects. Of course, those projects are often strongly opposed by people who do live nearby — ask the residents of Bylong Valley, or the Aboriginal Traditional Owners in the Beetaloo Basin whose land is under threat of fracking. Those projects also, of course, have consequences for all of us, not just those who live nearby.
Westacott’s commentary on planning approvals for major projects appear to echo the NSW Minerals Council’s campaign against the NSW Independent Planning Commission, launched after the Commission rejected a coal mine on climate grounds.
Gas as transition fuel
“Now to a specific idea on gas — this is the obvious transition fuel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the obvious resource we have to help other countries reduce their emissions.”
In claiming that gas is the “obvious transition fuel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, Westacott repeated a key talking point of the oil and gas lobby APPEA, who shares some key members with the BCA — BP, Chevron, Origin Energy, Santos and Woodside.
This line has been repeated ad nauseum by the oil and gas lobby since the dawn of time — see the example below from then CEO of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) Belinda Robinson in 2006.
We have previously written about the oil and gas lobby’s claims about transition here, but needless to say, given the BCA membership, it is entirely unsurprising that Westacott would take this up. Interestingly, APPEA representatives were in attendance at the National Press Club, cheering Westacott on.
What was not said
Westacott’s remarks about climate and energy were remarkably brief. On the crudest of measures — word count — she used 154 words out 6067 to discuss climate and energy, or just 2.5%.
Westacott did mention: a small business owner not being able to afford to heat their premises in winter; households installing rooftop solar; Coles and Woolworths installing more efficient fridges; and Bunnings’ solar-powered store in Alice Springs. Yep, a solar-powered store.
Westacott’s speech was perhaps most remarkable for what she didn’t say.
She didn’t mention the bushfires ravaging the east coast. She didn’t mention how much these natural disasters are likely to cost the insurance industry (including BCA members), and in some places make insurance entirely unaffordable. She didn’t mention how climate impacts are already affecting corporate profits including the Townsville floods to unseasonably warm periods depressing retail sales. She didn’t mention that Australia’s emissions have risen every year since the BCA campaigned to repeal the carbon price in 2014. She didn’t mention that Australians emit the highest emissions per capita in the OECD (see below). She didn’t mention the Australian government’s plans to use Kyoto carryover credits to cut its 2030 emissions target in half, which the BCA wholeheartedly supports. And she didn’t mention the repeated calls from climate scientists to urgently reduce emissions in order to avoid climate tipping points.
This speech is just the latest example of how, on climate and energy policy in particular, the BCA is not fairly representative of its membership and their interests. While insurers IAG and QBE have exited the BCA, Suncorp remains a member. It has suffered repeated profit downgrades due to the increasing cost and frequency of natural disasters. Boral has had a similar experience. Yet the BCA continually refers to the cost of action on climate change, and seems to ignore the cost of inaction.
Macquarie Group and the big four banks recently signed up to RE100, joining Citi, Google, ING, Microsoft, SAP and at least ten other BCA members that will source all of their electricity needs from renewable sources by 2040. Woolworths recently announced a 60% emissions reduction target by 2030. Yet despite these great strides by its membership, the BCA consistently represents the minority of its member companies who stand to profit from delaying climate action.
The BCA’s full list of members can be found here.
