Latest / Best of Business / Alan McDonald: EMA Advocate wants greater security for manufacturing businesses, election outcome irrelevant

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Alan McDonald: EMA Advocate wants greater security for manufacturing businesses, election outcome irrelevant · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Election your wish list is starting to be filled out
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  Speaker 2: by various people. The manufacturers this morning telling us they'd
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  Speaker 2: like to see legislative stability across governments to stop the
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  Speaker 2: bleeding in the sector. They're talking about the d industrialization
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  Speaker 2: of the country. Allan McDonald is the head of Advocacy
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  Speaker 2: and Strategy at the EuMA and is with us Allen Morning, Morning, Mike.
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  Speaker 2: Same with infrastructure, isn't it. We want people to make decisions,
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  Speaker 2: stick with decisions, create a pipeline and we're off to
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  Speaker 2: the races. Is that how it works?
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  Speaker 3: Yes? And I think with infrastructure in particular, we seem
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  Speaker 3: to be getting close to something that looks like we
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  Speaker 3: have an agreed plan and we'll stick to it. So
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  Speaker 3: that's a great thing.
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  Speaker 2: Good. So what you're looking at, let's just count them off.
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  Speaker 2: Stability and certainty. You don't really have that. Do your
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  Speaker 2: infrastructure and consenting you'd be happy with that, happy issue
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  Speaker 2: with that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the direction of travel on that one
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  Speaker 3: is pretty good, and I think both of the major
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  Speaker 3: parties are pretty agreed on the spatial planning piece of it. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: there's some noise around the environment side and a couple
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  Speaker 3: of other bits and pieces, but I think on that
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  Speaker 3: one they kind of line up everything I've heard from
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  Speaker 3: the labor guys that I've talked to says they're okay
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  Speaker 3: with that, And it wasn't David Parker's piece of legislation
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  Speaker 3: last time around as well.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, energy supply, we're getting there, aren't.
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  Speaker 3: We Not as clear as we would like on that one,
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  Speaker 3: you know, I think we've gone from being internationally competitive
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  Speaker 3: to a supply and a cost that is routinely cited
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  Speaker 3: not the only reason, but one of the main reasons
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  Speaker 3: for shutting down number of our businesses, and that's contributing
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  Speaker 3: to them.
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  Speaker 2: The renewal of ellen, the renewables, the solar panels, the turbines,
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  Speaker 2: a spinning, the investment is all there, they tell us.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's plenty of those, but you also need some
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  Speaker 3: thermal backup for that, and you also need to be
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  Speaker 3: able to get the energy from where it's generated to
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  Speaker 3: where it's needed, and there's some regulatory handbrakes in the
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  Speaker 3: way of that that make it difficult. For example, you
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  Speaker 3: can't build ahead of the generation being built, which seems
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  Speaker 3: a bit counterintuitive, but that's the rules that transparer in
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  Speaker 3: particular works under legislation.
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  Speaker 2: You might have an issue, mightn't you.
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  Speaker 3: If there's a change of government. I think we'll see
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  Speaker 3: particularly fair pay agreements which are just national awards by
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  Speaker 3: another name that are being promised to come back and
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  Speaker 3: don't see the need for those. They don't work and
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  Speaker 3: they just create. Well, in Australia's case, they've got one
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  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty of them now, so you have one
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  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty different minimum wages.
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  Speaker 2: And this in calling for what you want, great idea,
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  Speaker 2: nothing wrong with it until you get a centrist type
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  Speaker 2: government and a left leaning version of the Labor Party.
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  Speaker 2: As long as you've got that, you've got trouble, haven't you.
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  Speaker 3: Look. I think if we can agree on the major guardrails,
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  Speaker 3: the major settings, if you like, you'll always get some
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  Speaker 3: noise around the edges, but it shouldn't really matter what
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  Speaker 3: flavor of government we get, and to be honest, we
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  Speaker 3: don't care. Obviously we've got some preferences with some policies,
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  Speaker 3: but as long as you can agree on the major
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  Speaker 3: settings and you make some changes to around the edges,
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  Speaker 3: then that's okay. But we just can and you'll flip
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  Speaker 3: flopping that we've had over the last decade or so,
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  Speaker 3: it's just been highly problematic.
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  Speaker 2: All right, Good to talk to you, Allen McDonald out
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  Speaker 2: of the EMA this morning.
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