The pandemic is a distant memory over there. It’s not even mentioned in conversation.

A good friend, now residing in London, said: “The English have lurched from crisis to crisis over the past 10 years. They’ve had COVID, Brexit, leadership crisis’, energy crisis’ and conflict in the region… but they just get on with it.”

Here in Victoria, we are also moving on, albeit that it will naturally take longer for a lot of businesses to fully recover from the pandemic. As it will take time for many regional businesses to rebuild from the recent floods.

If anything, these events have only reinforced how important business is to our state. They are the heart of our communities, in the city, suburbs and country.

That’s why at the start of this election campaign we called for business to be put front and centre because it’s business that will power Victoria’s future. After all, the private sector employs 86 per cent of Victorians and so when business does well, Victoria does well.

Election campaigns are like a pinata: the political parties take turns to whack away, spreading their promises far and wide. So far in this campaign business stands to benefit from the commitments but there are still more that can be provided.

Before the campaign started, we launched our election platform, Powering Victoria’s Future, outlining 61 recommendations to strengthen jobs and skills, make Victoria the best state to do business, drive our economy and grow our regions.

We also launched a scorecard to track the promises for business by the major parties. As we head into the last week of the campaign, we are pleased that both major parties have fully or partially adopted over a third of our recommendations,  

These include boosting training and skills, providing additional funding for manufacturing, expanding housing supply in Regional Victoria, cuts to payroll tax and stamp duty, creating a clean energy roadmap and implementing ways to regulate the energy market to ensure certainty of supply and price.

These are all things that business told us were important to our future and it’s great to see business playing such an influential role in shaping the policy debate, particularly given the pain that many businesses across the state have endured.

And we know the pressures aren’t going to ease. Rising inflation and interest rates have ensured that cost of living will remain a major issue for many Australians, and this will inevitably impact on business as it also deals with rising costs.

In many ways it is the perfect storm that business is trying to weather, a worker and skills shortage coupled with difficult economic conditions, and for a lot of regional business floods as well.

A recent survey of 1,000 businesses by the Victorian Chamber also found that the current worker and skills shortage crisis is impacting business of all sizes across all industries. We have more jobs available than workers to fill them and individuals are able to be more selective in terms of workplace environment and salary expectations.  

This comes as up to 63 per cent of small businesses, 93 per cent of medium sized businesses and 90 per cent of large businesses are looking to hire new staff within the next two months.

Staff shortages were also a feature of the conversations I had when in Paris and London; it’s clear this issue is indeed a global one. We will need to think and act differently to ensure our businesses are adequately resourced.

We have the choice to be either pessimistic or optimistic. It will shape our future. From my vantage point, there are still a lot of opportunities and we know how well Victorian businesses can respond. But what these businesses need are pragmatic solutions that will provide certainty for them to plan.

Business will play a critical role in creating our future prosperity and we need a plan to turbocharge the industries that will set us up for success including ensuring we have the appropriate skills, training opportunities and infrastructure.

While we are pleased that the major parties are attuned to these challenges, whoever forms government after this Saturday will need to have a laser like focus to ensure Victoria remains an attractive place to do business.

As my former colleague in London said, there will always be challenges. The trick is to remain adaptable and resilient to meet the challenges.

Victorian business has shown they can do both in spades. I’m hoping that whoever forms Government after Saturday, the first call they make is to engage the business community. Let’s hope business is given even more opportunity to thrive. Because it’s business that will power Victoria’s future.

This article was originally printed in the Herald Sun on Thursday 24 November 2022