Opinion: The BCA dinner proves ‘dud’ Albo doesn’t understand small business
Former COSBOA chair Peter Strong says in his experience, the Prime Minister has never been interested in small business as a policy subject.
This week’s Business Council of Australia (BCA) dinner – and the commentary following that annual big end of town feast-fest – shows a lack of understanding, from the government and big business. The world has changed and is changing.
It also shows that they neither care nought for the small business people of our nation.
Or they have forgotten small business is a thing of importance and its owners and operator are human beings.
Firstly, the interaction between the government and the BCA is all about big business as far as I can see. Which is understandable.
Yet as a result, the everyday mundane business issues that small business people and their employees deal with are ignored.
For example, skills and training have always been a crucial part of support to the small business sector; yet we see that Prime Minister Albanese demoted the skills portfolio out of the cabinet and to the outer ministry with a minister, Andrew Giles, who is in the sin bin for immigration misdemeanours.
That is not OK. Big businesses might not worry about that too much as they often do their own training and have their own training centres and facilitators. Small businesses doesn’t have those resources.
Why small business needs an efficient TAFE system
In the skills area, the government has also focused almost entirely on TAFE as the provider of training and private RTOs rarely get a mention.
The reality is we will always need an efficient, effective TAFE system across the country, and we also need a buoyant private training sector. The private sector can respond much more quickly to changing skills needs and to new technologies. TAFE, being big and cumbersome, will always take a long time to turn their training ship around.
TAFE will need to form committees, discuss all sorts of things, get the union’s opinion and consult ministers. As a result, it will focus on its own needs first – that of its teachers, on better use of current training equipment (even if it is out of date), and on the building infrastructure — before it looks to the needs of small business people and their employees.
Why IR changes are a nightmare for small business
The other area where the BCA is very vocal is industrial relations. If the big end of town thinks the IR changes introduced by Labor since the last election make things difficult, imagine what the small business community has to deal with – it is a nightmare. The previous system was known as the most complicated in the world to the point where even union-supporting law firms such as Maurice Blackburn could not get it right and had to pay back millions of dollars to staff.
It is now even more complicated, and it is the employees who will suffer from these complications, not just the small business owner trying to deal with more compliance.
Indy MPs should focus on small business
There may be some hope if we have a hung parliament after the next election, with independents having the deciding votes.
The independents have hopefully learned a lesson from the government sweet-talking them and rushing through the legislation abolishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). As a result, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) was cut loose with poor oversight by the Fair Work Ombudsman and we see the result — bikies, corruption, administrators and demonstrations.
Not a great outcome from Labor and if the independents have learned from that they may focus on the needs of their whole community — including small business people who voted for them.
Two of the independents come to mind – Zoe Daniel MP and Senator David Pocock. They have close and proven connections to their small business communities – they focus on that sector. This is what makes them independent. They listen to their constituents not to factions and ideological vested interests.
The other federal independents need to also consider the small business people in their electorates – in their community.
They should stop listening to other politicians and listen, like Daniel and Pocock, to the small business advocates and the small business people who vote.
Disappointingly, the portfolio juggling Minister for Small Business Julie Collins continues to be pretty useless, and while Anthony Albanese talks the small business talk, in reality, he doesn’t understand that sector and in my experience, he has never been interested in small business as a policy subject.
It should also be noted that the prime minister was one of the very few people in the country who weren’t aware of the failings of the CFMEU. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that from a small business point of view, Albo is a dud.
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