COSBOA has today responded to an article in the media suggesting it is in opposition to other business groups in their goals for tomorrow’s Jobs and Skills Summit. COSBOA supports the broad principles articulated in ACCI, Ai Group and the BCA’s joint statement of ambition released yesterday, in addition to the principles in its agreement with the ACTU. The two are not mutually exclusive.
COSBOA CEO Alexi Boyd said “We continue our conversation with Government, have agreed to begin a conversation with the ACTU, and our door remains open to work with the other business groups during and following the summit. We support the statement that the summit is a chance to find common ground and agree on the key resets needed to position Australia for the future. We agree that the summit should be followed by further consultation – it won’t be possible to solve everything in two days.
Ms Boyd added “Our agreement with the ACTU is on principles, not details. We intend to approach the conversation with caution and to speak to each of the other business organisations to hear their concerns so that we can come up with a workable solution – one that benefits small businesses.”
“COSBOA’s goal has been and will continue to be to improve the industrial relations system to make it simpler, more flexible, and more accessible for small businesses. That will only be possible if we are open to having a conversation with all key stakeholders in the industrial relations system. What’s changed is that we’ll be putting small businesses first and the challenge will be to find simplicity and flexibility in a system which inherently is not built for small businesses. No one said it would be easy.”