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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...

At ICA, we come across all sort of weird attacks on the self-employed. But one of the strangest is that we ‘screw over ourselves’. That was the argument mounted in California’s self-described ‘premier monthly business publication’, Comstock.

The ‘save us from ourselves’ argument was essentially the justification for Australia’s recent (fortunately failed) attempt to destroy the businesses of 35,000 owner-drivers. Lawyers are preparing the case for the class action to recover losses. Info here.  More...

There’s probably no more startling evidence of change than the development of the ‘bionic human’. Watch this extraordinary TED presentation about the new bionics creating enhanced human capacity. Alleged disability becomes ability! It’ll have your mind leaping!

Just as will the ticklingly funny discussion (also on TED) between Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin exploring how women’s relationships differ from men’s. As we’re (ICA) interested in small business, it makes us wonder about how women manage small business differently from men. It’s a cultural difference! More...

Two recent articles in Business Spectator – by Robert Gottliebsen and our own Ken Phillips – have highlighted the real significance of the new Unfair Contracts legislation that was proclaimed on 12 November.

ICA takes this opportunity to publicly thank Members of Parliament who made sure a workable version of the legislation got up. The Senate, in particular, played a crucial role in making the unfair contract laws effective. Our thanks to The Greens, Labor and all the Independent Senators—that is, Bob Day, David Leyonhjelm, Dio Wang, Ricky Muir, Nick Xenophon, John Madigan, Glenn Lazarus and Jacqui Lambie. And our thanks to the Turnbull government for accepting the amendments. More...

Last week, ICA’s Executive Director, Ken Phillips, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Turnbull which was published in Business Spectator. It was about the PM’s desire for an innovation society. Ken said small business innovation is in trouble because of the Tax Office and other matters. He said that there are two tasks:  More...

We’ve been pretty pleased with the creation of the Unfair Contract Protection laws for small business people. We feel that our campaigning for this since 2010 has been worthwhile.  

But it really came home recently as to why we do what we do. Robert Gottliebsen had an article in Business Spectator on the reform and there was a blog comment from Danielle which is worth quoting in full. Danielle said: More...

Since 2012 ICA has been tracking the extraordinary debate happening in the UK about the ‘evils’ of self-employment. The debate was first ignited by the UK Trades Union movement. UK self-employment has doubled since 1975 to be now 15 per cent of the workforce (4.5 million people). Incredibly, UK unions say this is socially destructive.

Earlier this year a union-orientated think-tank, the Resolution Foundation, made similar claims.   More...

Ken Phillips has recently been in Washington for discussions with several organizations about independent contractor rights and labour law in general. He was surprised to discover the extent to which the basic right to join or not join a union is denied in the ‘land of the free’. According to Ken, 'it's  amazingly oppressive Federal law'. More...

If you don’t ‘brand’ yourself when you’re self-employed, your capacity to be your own business and make good money is diminished. This is an important message I took from a presentation at the Pan-Asia small business conference in Macau in November. Full blogpost here. More...

Tui McKeown is at Monash University and on the ICA board. She conducts ground-breaking research into how independent contractors think. Her latest edition of the IPro Index, sponsored by Entity Solutions contains lessons about how businesses can interact with the ‘new worker’. More here. More...