Ombudsman calls for united charter
alister.thomson@news.com.au Assocation of Australia summit.
The two-day event, hosted by Southern Cross University’s Gold Coast campus, aims to result in the Small Business Charter of Australia – a blueprint for effective policy making for SMEs.
Ms Carnell said the number of laws and regulations are too vast and complex for small business owners to understand.
“If we want small business to be the engine room of the economy, we need to make it easier to comply with the relevant laws,” she said. “There are thousands of pages of tax law, the Fair Work Act has hundreds of sections, and that is before you look at wage awards.”
She said the “fundamental failure” of the system is it treats businesses – whether small or large corporations – equally.
“We have tried to make single pieces of very complex legislation work for large corporations and the local milk bar and it is not surprising that has produced a level of complexity that is a huge problem,” she said. Ms Carnell is calling for a “simplified approach” to assist SMEs in the form of a short document.
She said it would list the basic compliance level required for SMEs to operate.
“We need to say to small business: No one expects you to read the Corporations Act and the Taxation Administration Act but here are the things that you need to do. You must put in a Business Activity Statement every three months and so on.”
Ms Carnell said a Small Business Charter is worth considering. The idea is modelled on the European Union’s Small Business Act, which places SMEs at the forefront of policy making and seeks to ensure regulations don’t become a burden.
But she does not support new Federal Government legislation due to the difficulty of aligning federal and state laws. She would like the Council of Australian Governments to look at agreeing to a charter outlining principles to follow when implementing legislation affecting small business.