Pledges to appoint adviser to represent sector in workplace relations system and to take steps to cut burden of paperwork
Kevin Rudd is making a concerted pitch for the small business vote – giving the sector a bigger say in industrial relations policy as well as taking steps to reduce its burden of paperwork.
Rudd's latest pitch to the nation's 3m small businesses is a promise to appoint a special small business adviser to represent the interests of the sector in the workplace relations system and to help individual small businesses navigate it. He is also promising $200,000 to the Council of Small Business Organisations.
The promises comes on top of his pledge that small businesses would only have to lodge their GST paperwork once a year rather than quarterly and that the government would set up a "clearing house" to help pay and process paid parental leave as well as superannuation payments on behalf of time-poor small business owners.
Rudd is expected to make more promises to woo the sector after the Coalition launched a small business policy earlier in the campaign.
The Coalition promised to shift the burden of paperwork for superannuation schemes to the tax office. It is also promising to elevate the small business minister into Cabinet.
But the Coalition said it would not match Labor's commitment to require only one annual lodgment of the business activity statement on the GST, saying most small businesses did it with an automated system so the paperwork burden was "modest".
Rudd said the move would allow businesses "to be able to spend more time in their business, less time acting as the compliance agent for the Australian government".
