Small business: a public policy priority for prosperity

With Labor lost in a woke-infested wilderness, now is the time for the Liberals to position themselves as the only Party for small business. By Sarah Richards.

As the Australian Government looks towards minimising the inevitable national debt that came with its swift and effective COVID-19 economic response, the answer to ensuring a prosperous and secure nation is to incentivise and support the small business community.

The reason for this is clear. While there is currently limited statistical analysis measuring the entire effects to small business throughout 2020, data collected just prior demonstrates that small business makes up approximately 98% of all businesses in Australia.

According to Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman figures from December last year, there are over 2.3 million small businesses, employing over 4.7 million people (totalling 41% of the business workforce), providing $418 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP, 2018-19) and contributing 22% (small companies) to the nation’s tax revenue in 2017-18.

When you look at these numbers, there can be limited challenge to the concept that small business is the backbone of the Australian economy. The engine room of productivity. The key to societal sustainability. The solution to prolonged low unemployment.

It is why the Liberal Party always has, and should always continue to be, the Party for small business. It is also why the Liberal Party has the opportunity, through dynamic policy invigoration centered on small business, to appeal to a larger constituency than ever before.

Appealing to this increased collective is possible because the contemporary Labor Party are struggling with what it currently stands for as they suffer an enduring policy vacuum. It is therefore the perfect time for the Liberal Party to claim the traditional voting base of the Labor Party – the ‘working class’, as its own.

So why is this possible? Because the Labor Party has become lost in the political wilderness as it is overtaken by an extreme left wing, woke mindset. The traditional Labor ‘working class’ can be seen as parallel to Menzies historical ‘middle class’ as explained in his enduring ‘The Forgotten People’ speech.

This demonstrates that small business is not just a ‘concept’ to support, but that at its core are ‘people’: real, everyday Australian people. They are the ones who are possibly either working hard to start the small business or working for the small business. In modern terminology, they are no longer ‘the forgotten people’, but have become known as the ‘Quiet Australians’ or the ‘Aspirational Australians’, who can now identify with the Liberal Party values of individual enterprise and reward for hard work.

As Menzies himself stated in his 1946 election speech:

“These things (initiative, risk taking, ambition) are not produced by Government Departments or by learned clerks. They will be produced in the future as in the past by letting the citizen understand that there are still rewards for the courageous and the intelligent and the vigorous, and that the enterprise of the individual citizen is still the essential foundation of the development of the State.”  

 With this approach, the Liberal Party should champion itself as the only Party for small business. The way to effectively cement this in the minds of the resilient Australian people who create or rely on small business, is to centre policy around offering success. This is achieved by delivering tax cuts, minimising red tape, creating employment incentives, formalising fair and easy to navigate Industrial Relations law and rewarding innovation.

In fact, 2020 showed that small business really is in the midst of an innovation revolution. It was forced to promptly adapt to dramatic change and accept that a social media/digital/online economy to advertise and trade, has never been more necessary.

When this innovation is backed by a Liberal government, founded on strong democratic principles, who give the Australian people the tools they need to foster their own future rather than dictate it, and who implement supportive schemes in times of crisis like JobKeeper, it is evident that the two really do mesh together perfectly.

It is why if the Liberal Party solidifies itself as the party for small business, as the party for the Australian people, then it should in an ideal world, continue to be the party that holds government.

It is why small business must be a public policy priority for prosperity.

Sarah Richards is the lead Liberal Councillor at Hawkesbury City Council and was the 2019 Federal Liberal candidate for Macquarie.