Page 977 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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The Greens have been working hard within this Assembly to improve the number of levers that the ACT government has in relation to small business. I will talk particularly about the impact assessment process when I actually move my amendments, given that it is the major part of the amendments, but I am pleased to see the list that Mr Barr had in his amendment of the various programs that the ACT government has for small businesses in the ACT.
But one of the other issues I would like to talk about, and I was surprised that Mr Smyth did not talk about it, is that there are burdens for small businesses, and they are not just burdens from government. Competition is a major issue for small business. Particularly here, one area of course that I would like to mention is Civic and the impact that a large business, QIC, has had on small businesses. We are all aware of the state of empty shops, in Centrepoint in particular, in Civic. We are all aware of the impact that that large business has had on smaller business. Most of the smaller businesses are of course family owned businesses, and the Greens believe there is a very real role for ensuring fair competition between businesses. And this is a role that the government has to play in terms of regulation to ensure there is fair competition.
Assembly members will recall that the Assembly is currently having an inquiry into supermarket competition policy and while obviously I do not want to make any comments as to what outcomes there may be, I think that one of the reasons we are doing this is that this Assembly recognises that competition policy is an issue. If we are to treat all our businesses fairly, we have to make sure that our competition policy is fair.
It is not simply a matter of saying, as Mr Smyth implied, that the government should get out of the arena. It is not as simple as that. We do have differences in size and power between businesses and this is an area where it is quite legitimate for the government to have some basic ground rules as to fair competition. That is why, I guess, the Greens focus more on small and medium businesses rather than on whether the ownership is family or otherwise.
On this note, we are very pleased that the federal government has now agreed to have a small business commissioner. In the past we have had an ACT small business commissioner, and that was a useful position to have. We believe that the soon-to-be federal small business commissioner will have similar aims around statistics and red tape, and hopefully this position will have a growing focus on family businesses and small business.
I would have to say, from my history in the public service and of course from what I read, that both the Liberal and Labor parties seem to have a focus on favouring bigger businesses rather than small businesses, if only because from a bureaucratic point of view it is much easier to do so. It is much easier to work with a few stakeholders in an industry than to work with hundreds or thousands of stakeholders, and I think it is really important that we, as lawmakers, continually remind the bureaucracy that while it may be easier to deal with a couple of stakeholders out there, a couple of big businesses, that is not the way to do it. We actually should be encouraging a diversity of businesses. We should be encouraging a diversity of opportunities. We should be encouraging small business and medium business.
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