The Biggies

March 1, 2021

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The Biggies

Grounded: Get Australia Moving

Good to Go - a safe reopening of the economy

BizRebuild

Big or small red tape hurts us all

Australia at work

Taking a big stand for small business

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Support the campaign to get Australia moving by emailing your local members of Parliament today.

Dear Member,

I want to get Australia moving again.

Australia is losing $319 million a day in domestic and international air travel closures, they are costing tens of thousands of jobs. Restarting aviation is critical to the recovery.

I urge you to develop a plan for domestic travel before Christmas that removes state border restrictions and opens up the economy.

At the same time, we can’t afford to be left behind and miss out on opportunities to establish safe travel corridors with other low-risk countries who have also managed the virus well.

We are not asking for a free for all – we need a highly-targeted, careful and gradual reopening of the economy based on health advice with robust nationally consistent systems in place for departures and arrivals, quarantining, local containment, and digital tracking and tracing.

This means ensuring businesses and communities who rely on air travel can thrive. From tourism providers, farmers, exporters, education providers and manufacturers, their lives have ground to a halt.

There’s more passenger aircraft than just carrying people.

International aviation generates about $100 billion a year in export revenue and supports about 515,000 jobs across the country.

Putting a nationally agreed plan in place for international travel will allow us to ramp up this critical sector once we get the green light.

This is not a temporary problem for Australia. If we fail to begin carefully reopening, we will miss out, more people will be unemployed, and more businesses will fold.

Kind regards,

To do list:

By Christmas, the state borders are open and there are clear national protocols in place for arrivals and departures, quarantining, local containment, and digital tracking and tracing

Careful and gradual reopening of international borders with priority given to:
- returning Australians
- international students, signalling to them we will be open for term one next year subject to agreed protocols for quarantining
- targeted skilled visas for high demand workers to support business growth in Australia

Targeted visas aligned to the Global Business and Talent Attraction Taskforce

Establish a nationally consistent, risk-based approach to quarantine

Establish a process to identify and begin negotiating safe travel corridors with low risk countries

State border closures have seen passenger numbers on Australia’s busiest air routes plummet 91 per cent since March, crippling the aviation sector and causing harmful knock-on effects in tourism and hospitality.

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The economic fallout from the shutdown of domestic aviation over the past seven months is $17 billion and $61 billion for international flights.

More than 34,000 people nationwide have been affected by job losses and furloughed positions. The fallout includes widespread job losses across the aviation sector including airlines, airports, catering, ground handling and transport services.

We can’t afford to be left behind and miss out on opportunities to establish safe travel corridors with other low-risk countries who have also managed the virus well.

Passenger aircraft carry much more than people.

International aviation generates about $100 billion a year in export revenue and supports about 515,000 jobs across the country.

Putting a nationally agreed plan in place for international travel will allow us to ramp up this critical sector once we get the green light. This is not a temporary problem for Australia. If we fail to begin carefully reopening, we will miss out.

‍Support the campaign to get Australia moving by emailing your local members of parliament today.

Authorised by J. Clark for the Business Council of Australia of 120 Collins St, Melbourne.

Support the campaign

Support the campaign to get save jobs and businesses by emailing your local members of Parliament today.

Dear Member,

We need an industrial relations system that protects workers and business. For decades, attempts at industrial relations reform have generated noise and division, often with little gain.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has brutally exposed the inflexibility of this system making it harder for small businesses to grow and impacting wages growth.

Unions and employers have worked together to agree to amend the system to save jobs and businesses and keep as many people in work or connected to their workplaces as possible.

Through this level of cooperation, the government’s industrial relations reforms are a sensible, middle ground package which seeks to solve the worst problems in the system. It is neither revolutionary, nor extreme.

If we fail to seize this moment, transforming our economy to get people back to work and create new high-paying jobs becomes significantly more taxing for your constituents.

We cannot fall back into the language of fear, confusion and ‘us versus them’. We cannot revert to the old language that has held us back.

We believe Australians expect us to do better. So, let’s work together to get this right, get the right safeguards in place, and get this done.

Kind regards,

The Facts

Part of the reason the system isn’t working is because the enterprise bargaining system has become so slow and technical that it’s on the brink of collapse.

The reality is employees on EBAs get paid more, yet the number of people covered by active EBAs has fallen by 20 per cent over the past decade.

The government’s proposed changes will mean EBAs can be approved within 21 days, speeding up the delivery of wage rises and other benefits to workers. The focus will return to co-operation between employers and employees – the foundation of our industrial relations system – and incentivise more ambitious, win-win agreement making.

The reforms will also make the awards system less complex. The JobKeeper flexibility provisions that enabled changes to employee duties and location of work during the pandemic will apply to distressed industries for a further two years.

New flexible part-time arrangements will give employees the choice of picking up more hours of work. Workers will still be paid penalty rates for weekend work. This will increase take-home pay, address underemployment and reduce businesses resorting to casuals.

Casuals will have a clear definition and a proper pathway to become permanent. Employers must offer casual staff working regular hours the option to convert to more secure permanent employment after 12 months. If employers fail to provide this option, they are in breach of the Act.

Changes to greenfield agreements will extend the life of these agreements to up to eight years, injecting more certainty into pay and conditions, making investment into major projects more attractive and giving people a wage rise every year.

And reforms to compliance will help employers identify genuine wage mistakes and fix them. This will especially help small businesses meet their obligations and ensure workers are not underpaid. For deliberate and serious wage theft higher civil sanctions will be introduced, as well as a new criminal offence.

Put together, this package represents a way forward that will help business create new jobs and contribute to a stronger economy.

‍Email your local federal representative today and urge them to support this package.

The Biggies

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The Facts