Bran Black and Luke Achterstraat represent business at the opposite ends of the spectrum but are determined to present a united front in Canberra.
Already a subscriber?Bran Black hadn’t officially started as the chief executive of the Business Council of Australia last year when he called up the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia CEO, Luke Achterstraat.
, advocating in favour of business ahead of next year’s federal election at a time when Labor is pushing to make mergers harder and the Coalition, under Peter Dutton, is pushing for powers to break up big business. Former BCA president Tim Reed then approached the former NSW trade minister Stuart Ayres, before sounding out Perrottet for the job. Black shrugs off the controversy. “It doesn’t worry me,” he says, when asked whether he took the job that no one else wanted., who resigned after a backlash by members and Liberal MPs over the industrial relations changes.
Black, a politico who spends his free-time captaining a patrol at Manly Life Saving Club and kayaking on the harbour, adds his family also run a small business. “My wife runs a childcare business and we have a reasonable stake in it, we opened our first centre in July last year.” The Business Council of Australia’s then incoming chief executive Bran Black shakes hands with the prime minister, in August 2023, as former BCA president Tim Reed watches on.Achterstraat says what they learnt through the tranches of the IR changes is that “the business community is stronger together.
“If you take taxation alone in MYEFO, $153 billion coming from company tax. That’s almost a quarter of the budget. The top 100 companies are delivering 45 per cent of that, that’s a huge contribution to the budget,” he says. Black has been described as Macquarie Street’s Mr Nice Guy with UNSW chancellor and “chairman of everything” David Gonski describing him as the perfect diplomat. “He has that ability to make everybody like him and to like what he’s putting to them,” Gonski says.
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