![Australian Institute of Company Directors chairman Elizabeth Proust has veered off course on tax reform.](/content/dam/images/g/n/n/o/q/w/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gu5og7.png/1486256653346.jpg)
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The Business Council of Australia wore its fair share of criticism last year, having fought limply – some say – for company tax relief in the lead up to July's federal election, before its then president Catherine Livingstone declared campaigning beneath it because "the integrity of its policy positions should speak for themselves" (an unrehearsed form of words we're sure Commonwealth Bank's new chair regrets deeply – hey, we know the feeling!).
But it was the performance last week of the BCA's peers that defied logic and reinforced the business community's (often unfair) reputation for political ineptitude in Canberra.
On Wednesday, the Australian Industry Group's Innes Willox – a former chief of staff to Alexander Downer, no less – took the liberty of proposing a compromise on the Turnbull government's legislative agenda, put to the Australian people, on corporate tax cuts. How good of him!
"Rather than persisting with legislating the full plan, only the initial tranche could be put to the Parliament. This would see the 27.5 per cent phase in only for micro, small and medium-sized companies." Perhaps if this version gets stuck in committee, Willox will heroically argue that a tax relief measure specifically for organic juice bars is better than no tax relief at all.
![Unhelpful: Ai Group's Innex Willox](/content/dam/images/g/u/2/4/k/j/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1486239260289.jpg)
But Willox had nothing on Australian Institute of Company Directors chair Elizabeth Proust, who came out swinging on Thursday for personal tax cuts funded by an increase in the GST to 15 per cent. That's right, while the peak body for Australian business advocates the government's pro-business agenda, the group representing its directors opens up a whole new front.
Notwithstanding the fact that increasing the GST rate merely to catch up to bracket creep is not economic reform but European-style fiscal sloth, what the hell is an industry lobby for company directors even doing in the personal tax space? It's hardly within its remit. But then Proust was waxing lyrical about Davos too, so little wonder the AICD has entered the policy twilight zone.