The Australian federal election campaign is underway! Or is it? It’s an interesting time for those of us working in government relations. Accustomed to the structure of a 33-day election campaign that focuses our lobbying efforts, we are now faced with an election date eight months away. Prime Minister Julia Gillard is promoting a “business as usual” approach, while the Coalition is clearly in campaign mode releasing a spate of policies recently. The media, applying micro-analysis to every issue in the context of the upcoming election, is in many ways, setting the agenda for how we operate in this environment. Making sense of the situation has been my challenge this month! However, it was the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott who hit the ground running with the release of the Liberal’s policy document “Real Solutions for All Australians” the weekend before Julia Gillard surprised us all with the election date of 14 September. It’s a 50-page document outlining the Opposition’s vision and policy direction should they form government this year.
The small business policy included election commitments to cutting red tape, abolishing the carbon tax, a modest cut in company tax and reviewing competition laws and policy – most of which we already knew.
But some specific policies caught my eye including:
- Giving small business the option of sending one payment directly to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for their superannuation liability, requiring the ATO to do the rest.
- Allowing small business to “opt in” if they wish to manage the administration of paid parental leave – otherwise the government will make payments directly to employees.
- Providing an extension of the unfair contract protection currently available to consumers, to small businesses.
At the time of writing, I couldn’t find a specific small business policy on the ALP’s website, but I’ll monitor that and bring you the summary in a future blog. But there was news for small business on the Government side of politics with the Ministerial reshuffle resulting in our fourth Small Business Minister in 14 months. Minister Chris Bowen, fresh from the Immigration portfolio, takes on responsibility for Small Business along with Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research. His career before entering politics was as a union organiser and political staffer, but with about 12,000 small businesses in his outer metropolitan Sydney electorate, I’m sure it wont take long for him to get up to speed with the issues. What do you think? Do you like the direction of the Coalition’s policies? What else could the major parties do for small business? Do you think there’s enough time for Chris Bowen to make an impact in the portfolio before the election?
