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We’re really worried about one aspect of a Shorten Labor government.

Bill Shorten plans to bring back trucking laws that will destroy the businesses of around 50,000 independent truck drivers across Australia. If they can attack the legitimate small businesses of one group of self-employed people, we have to ask, where will Labor stop?

Our use of the words ‘destroy businesses’ is not extreme. Under the now-repealed Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT), independent truck drivers’ businesses were wiped out. Several confirmed suicides occurred.  More...

ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips spoke at a ‘Liberty’ conference in Sydney over the weekend. With over 350 people in attendance and with more than 70 speakers it was a stimulating, ideas-packed weekend. Not everyone agreed with each other, but all present agreed on the right to speak freely.

Ken talked about how we at ICA have used the Australian Constitution to defend individual liberty, specifically the right of people to be self-employed. You might recall last year our:  More...

Owner-drivers
You’ll recall the mess last year in the attempts to destroy the businesses of owner-drivers in Australia.

However, the Victorian government is now reviewing its owner-driver laws, laws that we say are pretty good as they stand. We don’t think the review is looking to set up price-fixing as happened under the disbanded federal law. But Federal Labor voted to keep the disbanded laws. Who knows what the Victorian Labor government’s agenda might be? We urge owner-drivers to keep a close eye on this. More...

A very big Season’s Greetings to all ICA members, supporters, friends and contributors—of which there are many! 2016 has been an impressive year in terms of achieving positive outcomes for self-employed people.  More...

Yesterday, The Australian carried an article reporting that the AMWU wants to ‘represent’ independent contractors. The article quoted Ken Phillips (our Executive Director) who said: More...

The Australian election outcome is in line with the messiness that’s happening with democratic politics across the globe. It’s good that ‘the people rule'! But what of decision-making?

Sometimes positive things can happen through the political process. We were very pleased with:  More...

Last week we released a statement on the election saying that

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In all past federal elections Independent Contractors Australia has sought to detail and explain each party’s policy and positions as they affect small business people. We express our conclusions to help people draw their own conclusions.  

In this 2016 election we draw the following conclusions: More...

At ICA, we come across all sort of weird attacks on the self-employed. But one of the strangest is that we ‘screw over ourselves’. That was the argument mounted in California’s self-described ‘premier monthly business publication’, Comstock.

The ‘save us from ourselves’ argument was essentially the justification for Australia’s recent (fortunately failed) attempt to destroy the businesses of 35,000 owner-drivers. Lawyers are preparing the case for the class action to recover losses. Info here.  More...

The ‘truckies’ story just seems to keep movin’.

As we revealed the other week, Bill Shorten has vowed to reintroduce the RSRT Act if he wins government.

If Shorten wins and does this, we will re-launch our constitutional challenge. I explained in The Australian how we view the legal issues and why we will remount a challenge.  More...