Jobs, taxes and hydrogen the three uncertainties of life at business forum

So you think you’ve had trouble recruiting staff amid a low jobless rate and the hangover from a pandemic-induced migration pause?

Alumnus David Baxby (Class of 1992), speaking at the Bond Business Leaders' Forum, said he was trying to fill 1000 positions that pay on average $200,000 a year.

Mr Baxby, the Chair of Australia’s largest privately owned workforce services business WorkPac Group, said the vacancies ranged from skilled tradespeople to mining engineers and white-collar professionals.

“Part of it is caused by Australia being in a sweet spot in terms of the commodity cycle, but we’re also missing 650,000 skilled migrants over the last three years,” he told the crowd.

The other panellists at the event were Kate Vidgen (Class of 1991), Senior Managing Director at Macquarie's Green Investment Group, and serial founder Antony Ceravolo (Class of 1992), Director of the Ceravolo Group.

Ms Vidgen questioned Australia’s push to become a major player in hydrogen exports, saying the fuel might be better used to power local industry.

“It may be a lot smarter, particularly if you automate and do modular design for steelmaking plants, to undertake increased processing in Australia,” she said.

“My guess is there'll be a lot more onshoring of industry to where electricity is cheap, rather than exporting electricity to where current manufacturing is happening. And that's a great opportunity for us.”

Antony Ceravolo said the Australian tax system needed to incentivise risk to support entrepreneurship.

“The one big difference between Australia and the UK is our taxation and the way we deal with risk and entrepreneurialism,” he said.

“If you set up a company in the UK, the capital gains concessions and the reward you get for taking founder risk is pretty good. Sometimes it can be 10 per cent.

“When you’re a founder putting your own money into business and taking hard cash risk, these things really matter.”