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ICA strongly supports and promotes Small Business Commissioners across Australia. The most important role they play is in providing cheap and quick dispute mediation services for self-employed small business people.  More...

ICA has long supported the cheap and relatively simple dispute-resolution procedures on offer from the various State Small Business Commissioners. The email below is part of the correspondence between Guy (an IT contractor) and the NSW Small Business Commissioner's office over a dispute he had with a client. Rather than trying to litigate, Guy went to the Small Business Commissioner and had his dispute settled with a payout to him. Low cost; no lawyers involved. More...

We receive a lot of input from self-employed people about the realities of being their own business. The practical examples below help bring home the truth about the complexities of being in business for yourself.

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Tui McKeown is at Monash University and on the ICA board. She conducts ground-breaking research into how independent contractors think. Her latest edition of the IPro Index, sponsored by Entity Solutions contains lessons about how businesses can interact with the ‘new worker’. More here. 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...

ICA member Allen Cummings says the 457 visa arrangements are not working in IT. Comments welcome. Allen says:

I am concerned that the media doesn’t understand what is happening in the IT industry with offshoring jobs and the use of cheap 457 visa IT staff to replace Australian IT staff. More...