Marshall Place Associates Live More of Your Life

Scratch the hype and you'll uncover some real issues

If you read the papers or listen to Parliament, you might be lead to
believe that the public is vitally interested in industrial relations.

The Murdoch and Packer empires are obsessed with the huge wage bills of
their journalists and want to get their costs lower while keeping
unions out. (Interesting that the journalists are so obliging.)

The papers also serve the interests of big business that provide the advertisements that maintain the mainstream press.

But research shows most people list IR way down the list of their concerns.
Most people are vitally interested in increasing sales and marketing
opportunities and finding ways to increase control over day-to-day life
at home and in business activities.

So why is John Howard trying to get elected by banging on about IR when he
should be talking about how to start businesses and remove barriers to
growth? Government policy is aimed at keeping businesses small. If they
were serious about growth, for a start they would remove payroll tax.

Therese Rein showed that she could grow a global business using collective agreements – not AWAs.

She also showed that her businesses, which she grew from cash flow, is
strong enough to withstand its domestic home being sold off. Need more
revenue? Easy. Look to other governments like Britain that actually
help small business.

There are 1.96 million actively trading businesses, new ABS figures show.
Less than 1% employ more than 200 workers. The vast army of these small
business owners are dependent upon self-financing and friends and
family, and looking for ways to get a small amount of government
business to maintain their cash flow.

Most small-business owners want more support in expanding their local
operations and access to state and local government contracts of less
than $100,000. They avoid hiring any additional employees that would
take them over the threshold of payroll tax and an invitation to
the tax office to hound them with tax audits.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners with less than a dozen employees are more
interested in the way that Therese will go about selling her successful
business and finding ways to emulate her offshore expansion to be
bothered with the big end of town’s focus on unions, labour lawyers and
the self-serving interests of media owners