Business has work to do

JOHN DURIE
Telstra chairman and outgoing Asciano chief executive John Mullen yesterday backed calls for business to do a better job selling itself to the public.
In an interview with The Australian, Mullen said: “Business has done a poor job, and the fact it is the engine for jobs and growth is completely lost on most people who see it as an old-boys club.”
ACCC chief Rod Sims is someone who sometimes sees the worst of big business and wonders just what it is thinking.
He cites claims of Heinz allegedly selling products for one to three-year-olds as a platform for growth that have 68 per cent sugar, and Medibank allegedly dropping payments for some medical items without telling members.
Big business acting badly has resulted in the ACCC taking companies to court. Then there was the recent opposition to changes in the abuse of market power provisions that was opposed by big business.
The federal government rejected the big business opposition to section 46 amendments, which is yet another example of what happens when business loses its social licence to operate.
If politicians think big business is on the nose they are not going to go out of their way to help it, no matter what the consequences might be for the economy.
The ACCC’s Sims lists myriad examples where a small business wins a contract fight with a big company only to be met with a flurry of threats of legal action.
“No one should want that sort of behaviour to continue,” he told The Australian.
The Federal Court ruling against Prysmian yesterday was reminder enough of how some businesses work when you consider just 13 years ago the world’s biggest high-voltage cable companies had a global deal to share bid information and agree on which bids to make.
The matter has already been before the European courts and is under appeal. But here is a cartel with a clear cost to all power users and you could expect the ACCC may consider lodging an appeal against fellow player the French-based Nexans, which was cleared yesterday.
Sims’ and Mullen’s comments follow the recent election campaign, in which government plans to give big business a tax cut were strongly opposed and anti-big business rhetoric from the opposition was widely supported.
“Business has to work harder to sell its message,” Mullen said.
The tax debate was off track, he said, because “the average chief fin­ancial officer works hard to keep costs under control and, if that means paying lower tax within the rules, that is OK.
“If society doesn’t like it then it should change the rules. It is a bit like saying you are driving too fast if you are driving at 70km/h in an 80km/h zone,” he added. “If 70 is too fast the rules need changing.”
The solution for business is to explain itself better. “The trickle-down effect from tax cuts in the budget takes time and people rightly want to know what happens next then and now, and how they will be better off,” he said.
Mullen’s comments come as BCA chief Jennifer Westacott is conducting an internal workshop trying to work out how the group should operate in the future.
In the last election the BCA for the first time ever launched a ­national advertising campaign to attempt to protect its failing image, but it fell on deaf ears.
The Governance Institute released its first ethics index yesterday that showed big business and the banking and financial services sector ranked badly.