Advocacy Highlights

I am always keen to celebrate, and in 2021 we have so many advocacy highlights to applaud! We aimed to raise our profile with government as well as our engagement with members and other associations. We sought to influence governments around Australia, both as clients and as regulators to improve the business environment for members.

Our profile-raising reaped rewards at all levels of government. At the Commonwealth level, our continual engagement on skilled migration issues saw updates to the Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List allowing for priority visa processing for, electrical engineers, civil engineers, geotechnical engineers, structural engineers, surveyors, and transport engineers. In addition, most of our proposals were taken up as recommendations by the Commonwealth Parliamentary inquiries into skilled migration and temporary migration. We continue our advocacy with government to see these reform recommendations implemented.

On procurement, we demonstrated our influence as a solutionsfocussed advocate as we gave evidence on the opening day of hearings at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Inquiry into Procurement Practices for Government-Funded Infrastructure. Inquiry committee members were particularly interested in our ideas on de-risking the market including our suggested reforms to civil liability laws, unfair contract term protections and misleading and deceptive conduct provisions of the Australian Consumer Law. This appearance followed our successful collaboration with 13 other industry associations calling on the Commonwealth government to finally realise procurement reform for infrastructure projects.

We were joined by the likes of the Australian Constructors Association, Ai Group, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Roads Australia, and the Australian Railway Association. We all want to see a healthy construction ecosystem with every sector able to prosper and ultimately deliver world-leading projects for Australia.

This is not the only area where we worked with other industry associations to progress issues. Throughout the year we developed a strong relationship with the Insurance Council of Australia, advocating together on the state of business insurance in Australia. This led to us being invited to join their Business Advisory Council along with the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, and the NSW Small Business Commissioner.

2021 is the fourth year of our Christmas Tender Campaign, one of our key mental health initiatives, and this year we have been joined by the Australian Constructors Association, Roads Australia, Engineers Australia, and the Australian Railway Association. We jointly call on key government clients to ensure industry benefit from a break in line with the public sector procurement teams.

This is just a quick overview of our top wins at the Commonwealth level, more information on achievements at the state/territory level are provided by the team. We all look forward to even more advocacy wins to support your business in 2022. •

Kristy Eulenstein

Head of Policy and Government Relations