Rising costs top issue for next Australian government

Rising costs stood as the top issue that businesses from every state and territory and all sectors of the Australian economy want government to focus on, a new survey from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) showed on Thursday. The ACCI's Pre-Election Survey, which canvassed the views of 1, 700 business of all sizes in March this year, found easing the growing cost of doing business should be the government's top economic challenge. And according to this survey, Australian businesses rated Company Tax reductions, Personal Income Tax reductions and Carbon Tax abolition as the top three tax reform priorities for the next Australian government. "Faced with rising costs and a high currency outstripping revenues, action on cost pressures rank number one for 72.4 percent of business, with daylight between that and the next order of priorities on fixing employment regulation (54.1 percent) and relieving the tax burden (51.1 percent)," The survey showed. "These findings can't be ignored as they confirm just why the Reserve Bank cut rates this week - to take cost pressure off doing business. Next week's budget and the next government must respond likewise, without requiring monetary policy to carry the full load, " said ACCI Chief Executive Peter Anderson. He also said that tackling the cost challenge requires a whole of government response, starting with economic and regulatory reform that puts private enterprise and the struggling small business sector at the heart of policy-making and public investment.