After all, businesses are the heart of Victoria’s communities. They impact our lives every day and provide essential goods and services, whether it’s our local café, gym, corner shop or pub. 

If anything, the pandemic only reinforced how critical business is to our State. The private sector employs 86 per cent of Victorians and so when business does well, Victoria does well.  

To power Victoria’s future we need a plan to turbocharge the industries that will set us up for success by having the right jobs, skills, training, taxation, regulation and infrastructure.  

The one constant during the pandemic has been the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s extensive consultation with businesses of all sizes and sectors across Victoria. 

Over the past 12 months we’ve conducted metropolitan and regional roundtable meetings, focus groups and member surveys so we could better align the needs of business and ensure we generated the best ideas.  

The result is our State Election platform, Powering Victoria’s Future. It contains 61 recommendations and is based on four key pillars: strengthening Victoria’s jobs and skills, building Victoria as the best state to operate a business, driving Victoria’s economy and growing regional Victoria. 

There’s been a lot of discussion about tax in recent days and it’s certainly important if we are going to make Victoria the best state to operate a business. Competitive state taxes and duties play a vital role in stimulating business investment and jobs and growth. 

Payroll tax must be reduced for Victorian employers and this starts with increasing the threshold for metropolitan businesses so we remain competitive compared to other states.  

It’s why we’ve advocated for Victoria’s payroll tax free threshold to be brought into line with New South Wales and increased from $700,000 to $1.2 million. We should also reduce the rate from 1.21 per cent to zero in our regions to make them more attractive for business investment and growth. 

We’ve also advocated for swapping stamp duty for a broad-based land tax system as stamp duty deters families from moving house or location. We believe this would also make Victoria’s tax system more efficient and increase labour mobility at a time when we need it. 

But there is also a lot more we need to do as a State if we want to make sure that we continue to attract investment and jobs and don’t slip behind the rest of Australia. As recent events have proved, we have a chronic worker and skills shortage that needs to be addressed. 

We need to ensure our skills and training are fit for purpose and evolving to meet future industry trends. For example, how do we skill up an electrician to become a wind turbine technician as efficiently and quickly as possible? 

It’s why we need to invest in skills, training and higher education so Victoria remains the most highly skilled state and we unlock business success. Our universities will play a key role as will our TAFEs to deliver the vocational training and applied learning needed to build a skilled workforce.   

We also need to drive towards zero youth unemployment by 2026 to help increase productivity and access to staff. One way to do this is to implement a structured and funded careers strategy in schools to get young people into jobs faster. 

As the pandemic showed, major events and tourism are central to our economy. Victoria is the events capital of Australia and we need to leverage this to revitalise our visitor economy after the last two years.  

Other states have discovered what a major event like the AFL Grand Final can do for their economy and want more of our events. They can’t have them! But we need to develop a strategy that broadens our reach beyond events to generate tourism experiences that utilise our food, drink and natural landscapes to drive home our advantage.  

Victoria is also the home of Australian manufacturing, a $30 billion industry that provides jobs, boosts exports and contributes to our economic growth. We need to create a 10-year manufacturing plan to boost local manufacturing in existing and emerging industries. 

As important as Melbourne is to our future prosperity, we must also focus on growing Victoria’s regions. They are the lifeblood of Victoria’s economy, generating $72 billion annually and agribusiness, manufacturing and tourism will power Victoria’s future. 

We need to improve regional housing, planning and infrastructure. Good quality infrastructure, whether housing or transport, can help regional centres attract more skilled workers and tackle labour shortages. 

These should all be important considerations as we look ahead to November 26.  Powering Victoria’s Future puts business in the driver’s seat and will ensure Victoria remains the place to be. 

This article originally appeared in the Herald Sun on Friday 16 September 2022