7 February 2012
Manufacturing leader to ALP: fix issue of leader
The Australian
Manufacturing Australia executive chairman Dick Warburton has called on Labor to resolve its leadership issue, warning that continuing speculation about a potential change is adding to business pessimism.
After Julia Gillard yesterday placed the economy and supporting jobs at the centre of Labor's goals for this parliamentary year, Mr Warburton, a senior company chairman who last year was appointed to the new private-sector body to lobby for the manufacturing sector, said uncertainty about political leadership was detrimental to confidence.
Leadership speculation has re-emerged in the past few weeks as poor polling has increased pressure on the Prime Minister and intensified the talk of a potential challenge by Ms Gillard's predecessor Kevin Rudd.
"The leadership from a manufacturing or industry point of view has got to be resolved somewhere," said Mr Warburton, who last year advised the Coalition on climate-change policy but was also on a panel that prepared a report for the government on tax office scrutiny. "At the moment, in this twilight area of the leadership hassle, plus the minority government, the difficulty of getting decent objective laws through parliament is very detrimental to people's confidence."
Mr Warburton's comments came as a survey of business confidence by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry showed continued declines in December.
Mr Warburton said while the leadership was a factor, other factors such as concern about the financial situation in Europe and the high dollar were also weighing on confidence.
ACCI's director of economics and industry policy Greg Evans said business confidence was wilting in response to the uncertainty generated by the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and called on the Reserve Bank to cut the official interest rate at today's meeting.
"The December survey shows another round of broad-based declines in actual and expectations indicators," Mr Evans said.
"Significant uncertainty continues to hang over the Australian economy in the form of a potential European sovereign default, but locally, many businesses are experiencing difficult trading conditions as a result of the increasingly two-speed economy.
"Beyond the booming mining sector, the economy appears to be approaching stalling speed, as evidenced by the weakest year-end growth in employment in almost 20 years."