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We’ve been pretty quiet during January on issuing news alerts. That’s because we’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation for 2020. This year we’re making a big push for key reform issues for self-employed small business people. The timing is right because there is heightened political interest in small business issues.

Our 2020 campaign agenda has three key targets, all to do with small business people receiving a fair deal: More...

I’m in Parliament House Canberra.

We’ve talked about this before… reverse factoring.

Let’s stamp it out.

Here’s our quick YouTube post from Parliament calling for action:  More...

We’re pleased to report that, in this election, on the unfair contract reform front both Morrison’s Coalition and Shorten’s Labor are committed to major beefing-up of the laws. More...

Now that the federal election has been called (18 May) the importance of how self-employed people vote can be understood.

Demographer Bernard Salt gives an excellent analysis in this article from The Australian. Salt draws on ABS small business activity data calibrated to electoral boundaries. He looks at demographic changes between the last election in 2016 and now. He focuses on sole trader and small business activity.  More...

We were staggered late yesterday when we received the Morrison government’s media release announcing reform options to the Unfair Contract laws for small business people. If they proceed, the government is to implement our dream ‘wish list’ for these laws.

We first started campaigning for these laws back in 2009 and 2010. After a big battle in 2015 the laws were passed by parliament and came into operation. We didn’t get everything we wanted but it was a start. It turned out, however, that the ‘big end of town’ thumbed its nose at the laws because the laws had no teeth. More...

Bill Shorten’s Labor has announced that it will make unfair contract terms illegal and impose major fines for breaches. This is a position that we totally endorse.

Unfair contract laws protecting small business people were created in November 2015. Big businesses had 12 months to fix their contracts before the laws took effect. But big businesses did nothing. The ACCC has worked hard to enforce the laws but the task is huge when large businesses won’t voluntarily comply. (Idiots! Big business, that is!)  More...

We’re most pleased to see the head of the Australian Consumer and Competition Council (ACCC), Rod Sims, call for the unfair contract laws to be given ‘teeth’.  Good on you, Rod. We back you on this one!

The unfair contract laws for small business passed parliament in late 2015. We called the laws ‘A welcome disruption to the economy.’ The passing of the laws was the end of a seven-year campaign by us battling the big end of town. Here’s the history of our campaign. We nearly didn’t succeed, as the dollar limit on contracts was to be set so low as to neuter the laws. But the Senate came to the rescue and amended the laws.  More...

Ooops! I praised one of Australia’s banks while on a speaker’s panel last week at the Global Business Banking Summit in Sydney. Given all the heat coming on the banks from the Royal Commission maybe I should have been more cautious?

I was on the panel with Small Business Ombudsman Kate Carnell and economist Stephen Koukoulas discussing banks and small business lending. The room was full of bankers. More...

Here’s an easy question! What’s the most important thing in business? Answer: Collecting the money you are owed!!! Simple answer, hey, but something too many small business people don’t follow.

Having systems for prompt small business payments is a priority campaign for us. See here and here. More...

We’re mighty proud of our achievement in securing unfair contract protections for self-employed, small business people. It was a campaign we started in 2009. Here’s our campaign history. It was tough work.

The Australian Bankers Association strongly opposed us and we had several polite but unsuccessful meetings with them. They fought to kill the Bill in 2015, but thanks to some hard work and the Senate our campaign succeeded. The laws started in late 2016. More...