"The business community welcomes the Prime Minister's announcement of practical steps towards the recovery and rebuilding of the Australian economy," Innes Willox, Chief Executive of the national employer association Ai Group said today.
"The additional allocation of $1.5 billion to bring forward and initiate small shovel-ready infrastructure projects will assist in job creation while improving amenity and road safety.
"The progress on speeding up approvals processes is commendable and the additional efforts to further reduce approval times and to move to ‘single touch approvals’ will add momentum. The close involvement of the states and territories has the potential to help secure real progress. It will be critical to ensure local governments are also brought into this streamlining process.
"The next phase of work for the Deregulation Taskforce has the potential to make substantial inroads into the red tape burden faced by Australian businesses. The commitment to forging greater mutual recognition of occupational licensing and registration is most welcome and has the potential to address a longstanding bugbear of employers.
"The move of the Deregulation Taskforce to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet will help in building whole-of-government buy-in. Giving the Taskforce an explicit focus on the culture of regulation could prove to be decisive. For too long regulators have been coloured by an unrecognised anti-business sentiment that has prevented the development of more effective and less burdensome regulatory regimes.
"The steps announced today are measures that will not only hasten recovery from the current crisis, they will help set Australia up for a more productive economy and will contribute to the lift in productivity that is so important for future gains in the economy and community well-being," Mr Willox said.
Media enquiries: Tony Melville – 0419 190 347
