While welcoming the white paper as “a substantial roadmap for the future”, Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, also criticised some of the omissions in the report.
Willox said it was disappointing that workplace relations reform, a key ingredient of productive performance, was absent in the white paper.
“More flexible workplace relations are critical to the realisation of productivity gains from other sources, including education and training and innovation,” he said.
Willox warned the best intentions in the white paper would “come to nought” unless Australia put in place the economic foundations of more extensive and competitive commercial engagement with the Asian economies.
“In addition to building Asian language capabilities and a greater familiarity with and presence in Asia, this requires a turnaround in the slump in our productivity performance and in the disturbing rise in our unit labour costs,” Willox said.
“For this to happen, both sides of politics need to embrace, develop and, most importantly, implement a national Asia-competitive strategy.”
Peter Strong, the executive director of the Council of Small Business Australia, told SmartCompany the white paper provided the genesis of a blueprint but said Australia needed to free-up competition so small business people could innovate and engage with Asia.
“For us, competition policy in Australia is what holds us back when we do want to innovate and do want to look at new markets, so let’s fix that up,” Strong says.
“Businesses in our major supply chains are under pressure from the demands of Coles and Woolworths and we must remove the protection from competition and litigation that is afforded these two, and others, through poor competition policy and poor contract law.”
