Over the last four years, I’ve visited many hundreds of small businesses across Australia. These visits continually reinforce my respect and admiration of our small business people as smart, innovative, canny and incredibly hard working.
 
Unfortunately, it’s a tough time for our country’s small businesses. Over the past five years, the rate of small business formation has halved. There are now 243,000 fewer people employed in small business and 10,000 fewer employing small businesses compared to 2007.
 
It’s not surprising that during the same period we have seen Labor introduce 22,000 new regulations and over the last fifteen months they have churned through five different small business ministers.
 
In terms of small business confidence, conditions, cash flows, profitability and employment they are all in negative territory according to the latest National Australia Bank’s quarterly small business survey.
 
If Australia is to develop a strong, diverse and prosperous economy with more jobs, higher wages and better services then we have to change this.
 
We have to recognise the engine-room of the modern economy is not in Canberra but in the hundreds of thousands of small businesses across Australia.
 
Small business is too important to be an after-thought for government.
 
Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and I have been listening to small business operators and have developed a plan that will double the rate of small business formations and create one million new jobs within five years.
 
This is our plan.  A Coalition government will:
 

• Abolish the carbon tax – the carbon tax has increased the power costs of every small business as well as the cost of their supplies.
• Cut $1 billion in red tape costs – providing an immediate boost to national productivity.
• Undertake a root and branch review of competition laws and policy and deliver more competitive markets.
• Extend unfair contract protection currently available to consumers to small business.
• Tackle union lawlessness in the building sector by restoring the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner.
• Allow small business to send one payment directly to the ATO for superannuation and then let the ATO do the rest.
• Take the paperwork of the Paid Parental Leave scheme off small business and return the ‘pay clerk’ role to government.
• Establish a new Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council to advise government on developing the economy.
• Ensure small business considerations are key to the role of regulatory and economic bodies.
• Create a Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman as a single entry point for services and for access to dispute mediation.
• Deliver a level playing field for manufacturing businesses with more effective anti-dumping measures.
• Have a dedicated minister for Small Business in Cabinet – not a minister who represents small and big business as it currently stands.

We will also restore confidence to the economy by being a strong, capable and competent government that lives within its means. We will get the budget back under control because Labor’s record debt of almost $300 billion has made our country more vulnerable to economic shocks.
 
The Coalition’s plan for small business is part of our broader plans for a more diverse economy. By building on our strengths in manufacturing innovation, agriculture exports, advanced services, world class education and research as well as mining, we can help all Australian small businesses to  prosper.
 
This is the plan that small business wants. Small businesses want a government that will reduce unnecessary taxes like the carbon tax, they want less red tape so they can spend more time growing their businesses and they want a government that will stop moving the goal posts when it comes to small business. This is what a Coalition government will deliver.
 
The Hon Bruce Billson MP
Federal Member for Dunkley
Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy & Consumer Affairs

What do you think? Will small businesses be better off under a Coalition government?