Collectively, the Australian Investment Council’s members support 700,000 jobs, back 2,200 companies – mostly SMEs – and add $120 billion to the economy each year.
These are the people and organisations that allocate capital and invest it into start-ups and unlisted high-growth companies.
Companies that are supporting national priorities, rebuilding resilience, underpinning a more dynamic and competitive economy, and ensuring that we keep making things in Australia.
Companies such as sustainable packager BioPak, phone mounting manufacturer Quad Lock, and total artificial heart developer BiVACOR.
Investors in companies like these, do more than write a cheque. They put financial and human capital to work to build founder and team capability, develop product and expand into new markets.
These investments deliver competition and choice in our economy.
Productive risk sits at the heart of this, and it has been somewhat overlooked in the framing of the proposed capital gains tax changes.
Productive risk requires ideas, talent, and capital – three legs of the one stool. If any one of these legs are compromised, the stool falls over.
Tax settings are critical to the success of our start-up and growth sectors – the existing policy settings, that have channelled more than $36 billion of investment, backed more than 3,000 companies and galvanised more than 16,000 investors - are proof of that. They have been phenomenally successful.
Let’s protect them so innovative businesses continue to be born here, backed here, and built here.