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Last week ICA was involved in the very successful National Small Business Conference in Melbourne. Here’s a quick video giving an overview of the conference.
 
The presentations were outstanding. You can access PowerPoint presentations from the motivational speakers, the government policy people and academics here.

We were sorry to discover that the current Victorian Small Business Commissioner, Geoff Browne, is not seeking reappointment. Geoff has done a brilliant job for small business people in Victoria. Here’s his press release. Our thanks to Geoff.

You’ll be aware how much we ‘beat up’ on the Tax Office for what we consider to be its aggression—in many cases against small business people. Well, the ATO gave a presentation at the conference on how it is changing. We were impressed. If its intent follows through in practice, we could/should see a new approach by the ATO more orientated to treating small business people as ‘clients’ rather than ‘the enemy’.

But, oh my goodness, we think we may have been conned by the Federal bureaucracy! Under the new unfair contract laws for small business, which ICA has pushed for so long, we thought the government had to comply along with the rest of the community. But no! It turns out that government only has to comply when involved in ‘business’. So if, for example, the Social Security department engages an IT contractor, that’s not a ‘business’ activity and the unfair contract laws do not apply to them. What duplicity! The bureaucracy refuses to have the laws that apply to the community apply to it. Watch this space for a new ICA campaign!