Harvey Norman chairman Gerry Harvey has hit out at the employers associations and unions that make it “ten times more complicated to employ someone” in Australia.

Harvey will appear tomorrow at the Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra. Harvey Norman today released its FY22 results, which saw a 3.6 per cent fall in full-year net profit to $811.53 million.

“We have got the most complicated wage system in the world, and so you’ve got to employ lots of people to work out how do you pay someone,” Mr Harvey told The Australian.

“It is extraordinarily complicated. Why can’t you just have someone that works for you and you know what you are going to pay them instead of all these little tricky things you’ve got and they make it worse every year.

“You’ve got the employers associations, unions and they get together to have these talkfests and they make it ten times more complicated to employ someone.”

Harvey has also echoed calls to open immigration to allow skilled and unskilled workers into Australia.

“In our IT department and administration departments we are at least 50 people down … then you have staff off every week with Covid or the flu, and that’s happening for everyone not just us.

“And the biggest problem that every business has got is trying to get people to work for them. I’ve got farms, cattle and horse farms, and I can’t get anybody on the farms, I am in dire trouble.

“The problem we have got is that you’ve got to get backpackers back in here, you have got to get a lot of unskilled labour as well as skilled, and how do you get that when they don’t even want to come here in a lot of cases now because they’re doing well where they are?

“The only reason they come here is because they can get more money here, but they’re getting more money there.”