Page 1839 - Week 06 - Thursday, 14 May 2015
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base of small businesses, throwing thousands of people out of work and then wondering why that might have an impact on small businesses in the territory. They have been very busy suppressing wages growth and wondering why anaemic wage growth means there is less disposable income for people to spend in our small businesses. Now we have discovered small business at a national level. This is at least a welcome advance on what has been the policy prescription for the territory from the Liberal Party.
As I noted in the Assembly yesterday, the budget has eased up a little on the beatings of the ACT economy, but there is still a lot of healing required. To help support the healing process and reinvest in growth and investment in Canberra business, the creation of Access Canberra, as announced in December last year, has brought together a range of regulatory functions for the purpose of improving ACT government service, particularly to small business. Access Canberra is playing a pivotal role in reducing the cost of doing business in the territory by providing a seamless customer experience. In this instance, in the simplest of terms, the bureaucrats do the running around behind the scenes, not business owners and employees. We have increased the number of services we make available online, broadened the number of services available from government shopfronts, joined up regulatory activities, coordinated better our events approvals process, streamlined regulation and reduced duplication of processes.
Focusing on making things easier for the customer is what Access Canberra is about. There is no doubt that small businesses are important customers for Access Canberra. To that end they are developing simple, streamlined information services for small business, recognising that many small business owners and operators in the territory do not have time to read pages and pages of legislation or detailed guidance material. They are moving to provide more and more services online so that they are available 24Â hours a day, seven days a week to be accessed when it is convenient for small businesses owners. My objective is that Access Canberra is able to provide business with very simple forms that are easy to access and can be filled in and submitted online. Examples include payroll tax forms, outdoor cafe permits and funding agreements for registered training organisations. Access Canberra is working on bringing stamp duty payments, lottery applications and food business licence applications, amongst others, online in coming months.
The government’s commitment to support ACT small businesses can also be seen through our business development strategy. A key imperative of growth, diversification and jobs was to create the right business environment to provide a strong and stable foundation for small business to grow. The strategy has delivered a mix of programs and initiatives providing targeted support for these businesses to achieve their aspirations. Over the last three years we have been translating that strategy into action. I was very pleased to report to the Assembly not that long ago that all 26 commitments in that first phase of the strategy have now been implemented.
One of those key commitments was a series of successive payroll tax cuts, which mean that small businesses in the ACT benefit from the highest payroll tax-free threshold in Australia, the most generous payroll tax arrangement in Australia. Increasing the payroll tax-free threshold has delivered a tax cut to small business in
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