The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) and National Retail Association (NRA) have submitted a comprehensive reform proposal to the Economic Reform Roundtable, calling for urgent regulatory harmonisation across jurisdictions to unlock productivity gains in Australia’s $430 billion retail sector.

The submission, from organisations representing 1.4 million Australian retail workers, identifies regulatory inconsistency as a major drag on business efficiency and calls for the establishment of a national harmonisation taskforce with retail as a priority sector.

The proposed reforms target three key areas: improving productivity, building economic resilience, and strengthening budget sustainability.

The retail groups warn that persistent regulatory complexity and rising business costs are constraining the sector’s capacity to innovate and grow.

Key recommendations include harmonising trading hours, payroll tax, environmental regulations, freight rules, workplace health and safety obligations, and retail crime legislation across states and territories.

The submission notes that multi-jurisdictional retailers face disproportionate compliance burdens, particularly impacting small and medium enterprises with limited resources.

The groups propose a coordinated national response to combat retail crime, which currently costs an estimated $9 billion annually, with a goal to reduce incidents and costs by 50% by 2030.

They also call for streamlined workplace laws and expanded digital capability grants to help businesses adopt artificial intelligence and automation technologies.

On economic resilience, the submission advocates for national consistency in environmental regulation, citing the burden of varying sustainability legislation across states.

It calls for harmonised freight and transport regulation, protected industrial land for logistics, and improved supply chain coordination.

For budget sustainability, the ARA and NRA recommend reducing the company tax rate to 25% across all businesses, making the instant asset write-off scheme permanent, and increasing the threshold to $50,000 per asset for businesses with turnover up to $50 million.

The submission emphasises retail’s role as Australia’s largest private sector employer, with over 155,000 outlets nationwide and 95% of members being small and independent retailers.

However, it notes the sector’s vulnerability, with average retail EBITDA margins of just 5.5% compared to 12.4% across the wider economy.

The ARA and NRA, which plan to amalgamate into the Australian Retail Council, argue that targeted reforms could deliver significant productivity gains across the economy by reducing duplication, simplifying compliance, and enabling business-led innovation in a sector that “touches the lives of every Australian, every day.”

The submission follows a challenging five-year period for retail, with more than 1,100 retailers entering insolvency last year amid ongoing cost and compliance pressures.