I made contact last week with the three major politiccal parties to ask about small business interest and policies. Only the Greens have responded. They sent a copy of a media release from July 28, 2010:
Greens promote small businesses
Media Release | Spokesperson Bob Brown
Tuesday 27th July 2010, 12:00amAustralian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown today launched a suite of measures to assist small businesses.
The launch with ACT Greens Senate candidate Lin Hatfield-Dodds was at a restaurant in suburban Canberra.
Senator Brown said that small businesses were the power-house of employment in Australia, providing jobs for 5 million people.
Senator Brown is advocating a change to banking laws to help small businesses and flagged new opportunities in the energy efficiency and renewable energy industry.
“Our measures will help small business access credit, following the downturn in the global financial markets and promote new clean energy opportunities.
The Greens initiatives include:
- Legislation to require lenders to offer small business ‘fixed interest gap loans’ with an interest rate set at a negotiated margin above the lender’s cost of funds.
- Capped exit fees on loans to small business at the cost to the lender of the early termination.
- Support for the introduction of portable bank accounts to promote competition.
- Boosting the renewable energy efficiency with a national gross feed-in tariff to create new opportunities in the solar photovoltaic sector.
- An energy efficiency target that will create demand for energy efficiency certificates to be met by new small businesses conducting energy efficiency audits and upgrades in the residential, commercial and industrial sectors.
“The Greens have a strong record in the Senate of supporting small business across a range of issues including anti-competitive pricing and superannuation,” said Senator Brown.
“The Greens will be a voice for small business in the Australian Senate in the face of the powerful lobby of large corporations and the mining industry.
I especially like the first two bullet points in their list. It is good to see a party actually talking about small business in the election campaign.
Regretably a vote for The Greens is a vote for Labor and a vote for Labor sets us back debt wise for eternity.
The Greens also want to bring to Law that 35% of our natural growth forests,Bays and waterways are protected from the environment and Industry which will kill our fishing Industry.
They are a party that has no right to be the sole decider of Policy as they will only command approx 12% of the vote.
What about the National Party – A Proactive Newsagent. Yeah sure!!
Oh some people do not get it….
The Nationals have similar idiologies to the Liberals and they compliment each other.
I do not get your point Paul !!!!!
A vote for the Greens is a vote fro Labor.
Fact: primary vote Labor 36%
Liberals / Nationals 47%
so who should govern ???
Proactive,
It seems you haven’t been following the election. Both major parties plan to be back in surplus by 2013.
And 12% is not a negligible percentage of the electorate. It would be undemocratic to suggest that because 12% is smaller than the primary vote for the major parties they should have no say. The senate is structured this way so it gives smaller parties the opportunity to act as a check and balance on the government.