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The Australian banks tried hard to stop unfair contract laws for small business people and they nearly succeeded. Fortunately, the banks failed. Now the laws have been proclaimed and come into effect on 12 November 2016.

Here’s the new Act. Here’s what makes a contract clause unfair.
Here’s ACCC information. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) is now checking contracts. More...

The Australian union movement has this week been debating its future. It’s worried. Its membership in the private sector is plunging below 14 per cent of the workforce (less than 17 per cent overall). It’s frantic that new disruptive technologies such as Uber, job networking, crowd-sourced funding and more will create an explosion in self-employment. It is horrified that people will become their own bosses!  More...

‘eLabour’ is changing the face of ‘employment’ across the globe. The Wall St Journal says that it's necessary to focus on being ‘employable’ rather than ‘employed.’ More comment from ‘New Jobs for Massachusetts’.  More...

The launch of Freelancer.com onto the Australian stock market last week created great excitement. Upon listing, its 50 cent shares skyrocketed to $2.60 settling at $1.60. Commentators referred to it as potentially Australia’s Twitter.

The story underpinning the share market hype reflects not just a new age technology but rather a transformation in the way business and work is organised. Freelancer highlights how the transformation is expanding and will continue to overpower human resource practices inside large organisations, labour and tax laws and the very idea of what constitutes a business. Read full blogpost... More...

ICA blogger (and China expert) John Findley takes issue with recent suggestions that SMEs are not well engaged with computer technology. Instead of concentrating on the Internet and on-line advertising, he argues that the future for SMEs and technology lies with productivity gains not yet realised. Full post is here. More...

Technology is – again – about to transform the way people work, resulting in another big surge in self-employment.

This next technological revolution is 3D printing. It’s here, it’s now, but it’s just in its tiny beginning. Simple 3D printers are already within a price range for most people – at under $1500. Certainly they’re a novelty at the moment, producing paper toys and the like, but could explode in affordable sophistication. Story continues... More...