Small business is the powerhouse of Australia.  While the rural industries provide the foodstuffs, the mining industry provides the resources we sell, it is small business, with enterprises ranging mostly from one to ten employees, that employs the people and provides the services that sell us clothes and food, and helps us with all those services we can’t do while we are at work or at home.

Yet, it is small business that bears the burden of the majority of legislation, red tape and bureaucracy in this country. 

At the same time, it is small business that is the answer to the economic problems of this country.  And most others.  Neither big business, not governments, can solve the problems.  What they need to do is get the heck out of the way of small business!

How can they do that?

Firstly, change the taxation system, as outlined in my taxation policy to the Transaction Tax, the 1.5% flat rate tax!  That will mean no GST, Bas Statements, income tax returns, employee tax calculations, WET, FBT, or any other tax calculations.

Second.  Simplify the employment rules and regulations.  The endless rules and regulations relating to what employers can and can’t do are preventing employers hiring the staff they need and want, and preventing them from treating them well. 

As part of this, simplify the “award” system.  A person doing a job on one side of the country needs to be paid the same for doing it on the other side of the country.  Same conditions, same everything.  What’s hard about that?

If an employee stuffs up, or is dishonest, they need to be able to be removed from that place of employment.  Fast!  No one, even the other staff, wants a thief or a crook working with them.  As for rights, if someone IS dishonest, they forfeited them.  If they are unable to do the job, they will feel better in a job they CAN perform well.  It’s neither fair, nor safe, to leave a person in a job they are incapable of doing.  The “Peter Principle” is not a joke.

Provide avenues for employees to easily report an employer who is not fulfilling their obligations, without requiring the services of a city legal team to settle the dispute, and vice versa.  Disputes will happen, each needs the services of an unbiased mediation service that has the power to negotiate, mediate and rule on disputes where nothing else will do.

Third.  Provide incentives for being an employer, and for taking the initiative for being entrepreneurial enough to take the risk that a person might be paying salaries for a dozen people, each of whom takes home more wages than they do.  Those incentives could be in the area of reduced council rates for start-up businesses, lower electricity tariffs, a single phone number that can access someone in government who knows either the answers that a small business person might ask or the SPECIFIC person who would have those answers rather than a perpetual run-around.

Fourth.  A communication network that is capable of handling the demands of a small business community that is doing it’s best to be the best in the world.  That includes a mobile phone network and broadband network that actually works everywhere AND delivers first-rate service to everyone on it.  The technology is elsewhere on the planet, why not in Australia?  At the right price?