Who's listening?

Josh Mehlman
23 October 2008

Regular Nett readers may have noticed by now that I’m a keen follower of politics. Perhaps ‘tragic’ is more accurate. When I used to work from home as a freelance writer, one of the highlights of my day was watching Question Time on TV.

One thing that has bugged me for a long time about Australia’s political system is how much the debate is skewed towards ‘working families’ – a code word for a swinging voters in outer-suburban electorates, many of whom have school-aged children. John Howard’s success in identifying and appealing to this group was a major factor in his long reign.

Kevin Rudd wrested power back from the Coalition by appealing to the same constituency. These days, Rudd Government ministers rarely let 60 seconds go by without at least one mention of ‘working families’.

With each major party desperately striving to prove it is a better friend to ‘working families’, people who aren’t ‘working families’ are ignored. Singles, childless couples, retirees and even real-life working families who don’t live in the right electorates are, as a consequence, characterised as selfish and undeserving.

Many Nett readers are members of real-life working families, so I don’t think I’ll get much sympathy if I take up this space whinging about the injustices yuppies and DINKs have to endure under our oppressive family-dominated regime.

However, there’s a strong parallel with the way the political system treats small business. And there’s a much greater injustice.

Discussions about the economy and the workforce are primarily focused around the tension between unions and Labor Party on one side and big business and the Liberal Party on the other.

The problem is, Australia is a land of small businesses. At least half the workforce is employed by companies with fewer than 200 staff. Most small business employees are not unionised so Labor doesn’t care about them. Most small business owners lack the financial or political clout to get much attention from the Liberals.

As a result, when politicians set their priorities for supporting employees and business owners, small business always comes a long way down the list. This happens no matter who’s in power. Aside from a few token efforts, so token they are almost insulting, small businesses are just expected to get on with it.

As you’ll see in our cover feature, a lot of small business owners are fed up with the situation and want it to change. But, for reasons you’ll find out in the article, getting small businesses to join up and gain an effective political voice turns out to be a lot harder and more complicated than you might expect.

Does it have to be this way?

Tomorrow (Friday 24 October), I'll be attending the federal government's small business summit. If there's any news, I'll blog it here, so stay tuned!