“Ai Group congratulates Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his colleagues on the re-election of the Coalition Government,” Ai Group Chief Executive, Innes Willox, said today.
“The win is an opportunity to put aside past divisions and move more confidently on delivering policies which will benefit the community and our economy.
“The narrow win will require extensive horse-trading and we would urge all concerned to work together for durable outcomes to deliver widespread benefits and greater investment certainty for business.
“Prime Minister Morrison is to be personally congratulated for achieving what most commentators saw as impossible and we look forward to him being rewarded with leadership stability and policy cohesion within the Coalition parties.
“A key measure of success will be the extent to which the Government is able to assert national leadership to promote investment, job creation, broader community prosperity and social cohesion.
“While there was little talk of productivity during the campaign, an ambition to lift our weak productivity performance should be set right at the top of the national agenda. To achieve this, we need to better coordinate the efforts of state, territory and federal governments; we need to overcome some of the entrenched interests that characterise our education sector; we need to develop more creative approaches to industry development; and we need to build consensus over progressing the design of our taxation systems. We also need to refresh our stagnant administration of enterprise bargaining arrangements and find ways to inject life into bargaining over workplace productivity.
“Another imperative for the next Government is to develop credible, durable and well-integrated climate and energy policies. If we continue with a succession of rapidly reversed policies or no policy at all, at best we will see a costly patchwork of state and localised interventions, and at worst we will see our current energy disadvantage cemented and a receding ability to meet our emissions targets.
“Our thanks go to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and his team for the consultative approach they provided in the lead-up to the election. All put in a tremendous effort to return to government. While we differed on a number of policy fronts, the opposition should be congratulated for putting forward such a detailed policy agenda.
“We look forward to working constructively with all members of the new Parliament and in particular with the new Ministers and Shadow Ministers,” Mr Willox said.
