Self-Employed Australia

Independent Senators – Your small business future in their hands

October 18, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

Have no doubt that the future of your right to be your own boss, to be a small business person, is in the hands of the seven independent Senators in parliament.

On Monday and Tuesday this week I ‘walked the corridors’ of Parliament House, Canberra, meeting with Senator’s advisors and others on the government’s 284-page, highly complex Loophole (Industrial Relations) Bill. I’ll be returning to Canberra several times before Christmas.

We’ve provided you an overview of the Bill and a detailed analysis of how the Bill trashes contract law as defined by the High Court. We’ll be supplying more analysis progressively. But be very clear on the central thrust of this Albanese government Bill.

This is the greatest attack against Australian small business people ever seen. More details below.

What should be happening are proper protections for small business people. One of these is the unfair contract laws. Seriously stronger unfair contract law come into effect on 9 November and, across the board, companies are upgrading their contracts. But government departments are not subject to these laws. That is, government departments can have unfair contracts with small business people and get away with it.

On Monday morning (16 October), independents Senator David Pocock, Senator Jacqui Lambie and MP Allegra Spender co-sponsored a small business breakfast in Parliament. The large room was packed. I had a chance to push this issue.

I put it to the Senators that this must be fixed. A one-paragraph amendment to competition law would stop this double-standards shocker.

Here I am putting this proposition. Senator David Pocock is behind me on the left of the picture.

But back to the Bill. The consequence of this Bill is that:

2 million self-employed people will be declared to be employees. This will kill incomes.
970,000 people who use gig work for top-up income will have their incomes trashed.
8 million casuals will be forced to be full/part time employees, losing 6 per cent of their income.

For just the casual workers, people on:

minimum pay will lose up to $3,062 a year;
average pay will lose up to $5,354 a year.

That is, the Albanese government is engaged in a massive attack against people’s incomes.

This is no exaggeration. These conclusions are based on hard analysis of the words in the legislation with clear documentation on what this means. But be alert. The Albanese government is conducting a scandalous misinformation and disinformation campaign to push this Bill through.

We have more detailed explanation papers that we’ll release shortly. You can judge for yourself. We’ve already supplied these to the independent Senators and MPs and they are listening.

Fearing the truth – Australia’s government institutions – ATO

September 19, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

In April 2018 we were intimately involved in the production of the ABC Four Corners program ‘Mongrel Bunch of Bastards’. The program exposed evidence of the ATO’s abuse of small business people. The program brought real ‘grunt’ to our campaign to reform the ATO. And we have to say that in our observation the ATO has improved since then. There’s still much to be done, but it is better.

Included in the Four Corners program was the profiling of Richard Boyle. Richard was a case officer in the ATO who exposed ATO abuse of small business people and he explained this on the program. The consequence of this is that Richard was charged and is being prosecuted. Richard has become one of Australia’s most high-profile whistleblowers. He faces a lengthy jail sentence if convicted.

In the production of the program, and subsequently, SEA has had considerable dealings with Richard. In July 2022, SEA released a statement joining the call for the charges against Richard to be dropped. In the statement we explain our dealings with Richard as well as our view of him and his whistleblower actions. We said:

…in our view the charges against Richard must be considered within the ambit of Richard’s whistleblower activity as it exposed malpractice within the ATO.

…Richard’s whistleblowing action (and the activities related to that) were done in order to protect taxpayers from garnishee activity by the ATO which breached the ATO’s own procedural requirements.

In all our dealings with Richard we have found him to be a person of the highest ethical and moral standards.

Our statement provides the full details of the independent investigations into Richard’s whistleblowing. Those investigations detail the maladministration of the ATO at the time and, in our view, effectively support the propriety of Richard’s exposure of the truth.

This Monday (18 September 2023) the ABC 7.30 Report ran a full segment on Richard Boyle. This time they interviewed a small business taxpayer (Dirk Fielding) who Richard had helped in 2017 and who, through the ATO’s actions, has been used to generate Richard’s prosecution. Dirk refers to the prosecution as ‘insanity’.

Further, last week some 30 MPs and Senators joined the call to have the charges against Richard dropped. We again join that call and reiterate the reasons for the dropping of the charges as we explained in our statement of July 2022.

A spaghetti bowl of complexity. The new IR Bill

September 6, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

Last Monday (4 September) I was in Parliament House, Canberra ‘walking the halls’, knocking on the doors of independent Senators and others. I was handing out an easy-to-read ‘package’ of information on our objections to the ‘employee-like’ laws proposed by the Albanese government. Here’s the handout package.

Around 3pm on Monday, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke presented to parliament the new IR law called ‘Closing the Loopholes’ Bill. It’s 280 pages long with a 521-page Explanatory Memorandum. It’s a highly complex Bill that wraps multiple industrial relations agendas into a massive piece of legislation. It’s a spaghetti bowl of legislative confusion.

The first thing to note is that this is NOT a law to close loopholes. It is a hugely radical agenda that will change the fundamentals of the Australian economy and how business people, particularly small business people, can operate. Further, it will impact the core of consumer and competition protections and law in Australia. This is a critical aspect that is not receiving any media commentary.

The impacts are so fundamental, far-reaching and complex that we’re not going to rush into our own commentary. First, we’re going to split the Bill into its many agendas so we can understand and address each ‘bit’. This is important because there seem to be many disguised sub-agendas that need to be identified. When we’ve done that, we’ll supply you with our assessments in what we hope will be a logical and digestible way.

Parliament sits next week then takes a four-week break. This gives us time to progressively give you our assessments without overloading you. We’ll be supplying these assessments to the Senators and MPs with whom we’re working. Parliamentary debate on the Bill will become intense in the sitting days 16–26 October.

It’s important to understand that these laws can fail if rejected in the Senate, but it requires nearly all independent Senators to decide to oppose the laws individually. And each independent Senator will form their own view on which aspects they oppose (if they do). We hope that our views and assessments will make sense.

Right to be your own Boss Petition

Don’t forget you can sign the petition to Defend Your Right to be Your Own Boss.

The petition is at this link (scroll down the right-hand side).

Right to Be Your Own Boss – Sign the Petition

August 31, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

Your Right to Be Your Own Boss is under attack.

We are endorsing a campaign started by others to defend that right. Check out the Defend Your Rights website here.

We encourage you to sign the petition. (Scroll down on the right-hand side of the website.)

This is important. Please take five minutes to sign it and encourage others to do so.

An update on our campaigning (see our website page)

It appears that the legislation intended to deny you your right to Be Your Own Boss is likely to be presented to Parliament in the next two-week sitting (starting on 4 September).

We’ll be in Parliament House on 4 September, ‘walking the halls’ and knocking on Senators’ doors with updated information on our objections to these planned ‘rights’ denial laws.

A key part of our campaign is to seek to extend and strengthen self-employed, independent contractors’ existing rights and protections under commercial and competition law. A key part of this is the application of Unfair Contract law protections. These laws are receiving a major upgrade in November this year, with serious sanctions for breaches.

Here’s our briefing paper on the ‘beefed up’ unfair contract law protections.

What we think is (frankly) scandalous is that this law does not apply to government departments. That is, government departments can quite lawfully impose unfair contracts on small business people whereas the private sector cannot do this. Talk about a recipe to repeat Robodebt anytime a government department goes rogue!!!

But we have a simple fix involving a straightforward amendment to the Competition laws that would read as follows:

Application of Act to Commonwealth and Commonwealth authorities
(1) Subject to this section and sections 44AC, 44E and 95D, this Act binds the Crown in right of the Commonwealth in relation to the unfair contract provisions of the Act in so far as the Crown in right of the Commonwealth engages in trade or commerce, either directly or by an authority of the Commonwealth with a small business.

Our briefing note explains the background.

This one-paragraph amendment to the Competition law would require government departments to comply with the Unfair Contract laws.

We’re starting our campaign promoting this legislative amendment to the independent Senators first.

There’s a simple principle here: Where government imposes obligations and responsibilities on the private sector, the same obligations and responsibilities should apply to the public sector.

Inside the Truth Police

August 19, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

In late July we alerted you to the planned Misinformation and Disinformation laws. The laws will require social media platforms (Facebook, etc.) to determine what is ‘true’ and to warn people for posting ‘untruths’ and then ‘cancelling’ them.

Here’s the government’s information sheet on the law.

We mentioned that we, Self-Employed Australia, have had experience with such ‘truth’ suppression. A member put up on their Facebook page a post we made commenting on the outcome of our Supreme Court action over hotel quarantine. Facebook had its ‘truth police’ sanction the member. We’ve now completed a detailed analysis of that experience.

The full detail is available on Ken’s Substack post here: ‘The Truth Police are here’.

It’s a detailed analysis of how Facebook imposes its ‘truth’ on the public and suppresses dissenting ‘truths’. We go into the detail because it gives an insight from a real experience to which anyone could be subjected.

The essence is that Facebook took an objection to the exposure of this statement by a judge in the ruling on SEA’s court action. The judge said:

“If SEA is not granted an extension of time the individuals referred to in the First Request will be freed from the not insignificant stress of potentially being subjected to prosecution for serious criminal offences… the 20 individuals identified in the First Request may suffer considerable prejudice if SEA is granted an extension of time…”[emphasis added]

That is, the opinion could be reasonably formed that the judge was commenting that if a person subject to potential prosecution was under stress, then that was a reason not to proceed.

Facebook sought to close down and suppress that comment in our view, and we explain in detail how Facebook’s outsourced ‘truth police’ approached this. Rather than determining what Facebook says is ‘fact’, our analysis is that they were in fact expressing an opinion on SEA’s opinion on the Court’s judgement. That’s okay if opinion is presented as opinion. It’s a different matter altogether, however, to present opinion as ‘fact’.

We say that it’s fine if Facebook wants to determine what is true for its platform. It owns the platform. It can do what it likes. But it is something entirely different for parliament to pass a law that all social media platforms must do as Facebook has done.

The compulsory silencing of opinion on the basis of political ‘fact’ determination by appointed ‘truth police’ heralds an era of oppression of the people. We have seen this far too often in the history of human activity. The consequences are always ugly, sometimes horrifyingly so.

The full analysis is here.

Working from Home is making us our own bosses!

August 13, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

The Work From Home (WFH) movement has been coming under attack. Office real estate valuations are crashing globally and ‘workers’ are to blame, it would seem.

But what is WFH? It’s nothing more than millions of workers taking advantage of technology that allows office work to be done anywhere, anytime. Effectively ‘we’ workers are acting like consumers and exercising our individual choices as to how we earn our incomes. In truth, we’re witnessing the crashing of market forces (millions of people making billions of individual choices) into the labour environment. To real estate moguls I say: ‘suck it up’ and adapt!

WHF goes further. It’s challenging the underpinnings of labour law and management, at least in the office setting. It is a moment in time, a revolution!

Even if you’re legally tagged an ‘employee’, in fact working from home takes on more of the features of self-employment (being your own boss) than employment. Progressively more and more WFH people will become formally self-employed.

I discuss this in greater length (in between putting on a load of washing – I work from home as a self-employed person!) on my Substack site. You can link here (it’s free).

But there’s another angle I don’t discuss on Substack—the gig economy. Quite often substantial aspects of WFH involve gig work. Think of WFH translators, transcriptionists and private tutors. They almost exclusively work from home, sourcing and managing their work through gig platforms. And they are almost universally self-employed. Yet the federal government’s agenda is to attack these people.

You’ll probably be well aware of our campaign to attempt to have this agenda blocked in the Australian Senate. The WFH movement adds further weight to our argument that the government’s agenda is nonsensical and defies the choices that workers (people) are making to have control of their own working lives. This is a ‘movement’ of individual choices by huge numbers of people.

Here’s the summary of our other reasons for opposing the government’s anti-gig, anti-worker agenda.

And a quick campaign update for you…

We’ve been in contact now with all of the seven independent Senators’ advisers. Discussions have been very professional and constructive. At this stage of advocacy our experience is that it’s necessary to engage with the Senators’ policy staffers.
There’s no legislation at the moment, but when it appears we’ll be doing further analysis and briefings.
We need the Opposition and six of the seven independent Senators to oppose any legislation in order to block it.
So far, we’ve conducted three trips to Canberra to meet Senators’ policy staffers in person. When the legislation appears, the pace of this will pick up. Phone calls, emails and Zoom chats have been frequent.

Touch base with me if you’re interested in more information.

Full campaign details here.

100,000 (plus) hear the message – Self-employed under attack

July 6, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

Recently I was interviewed on Spectator TV where I explained the attack against self-employed people being prepared by the Albanese government. I presented a simple example of how the promise to provide ‘holiday pay’ was in fact a con that will take money away from people.

Someone has taken a 5-minute clip from the longer interview and posted this on Twitter. This has broken through the 100,000 views mark in just over 24 hours of posting and continues to grow.

You can access the twitter post here.

We hope this provides a simple explanation.

We started our campaign on this in March this year – the Be Your Own Boss campaign where we provide lots of detail.

We have many more direct discussions in the pipeline with Senators and MPs and their advisers.

Campaigning is under way—Defending your right to Be Your Own Boss

June 7, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

We thought we’d give you an understanding of the mechanics of our campaign to try and stop the Albanese government from implementing its ‘employee-like’ agenda.

We explained early in May that the government had started the implementation process with the release of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations’ (DEWR) consultation paper.

Our first task was to assess and respond to the paper. We lodged our long submission (11,000 words) to DEWR and in late May provided you a brief overview. The reason for the long submission is simple. The government is throwing up a concept—‘employee-like’—which at first glance could appear reasonable. But it’s only when you delve into the detail of what this means that a full understanding is possible. And it means a direct attack upon your right to be your own boss, to be self-employed.

The next phase in our campaign started last week. This involves focusing on the independent Senators that the government needs to pass any legislation in the Senate. There are seven independent Senators. The government needs four of them to pass legislation.

Last week we began the engagement process with the Senators. It needs to be understood that all Senators and MPs are incredibly busy trying to comprehend a huge range of complex issues. Our responsibility is to present our arguments clearly, factually and as concisely as possible. To this end we’ve produced a four-page summary of our position.

Last week we had initial discussions with staff of some Senators and had one Senator ask us to come to Canberra to explain the issues in person. We did this and had a very productive discussion. It was pleasing to have this level of interest.

We’ve been conducting pro-self-employed advocacy campaigns for over 20 years and we’ve learnt one thing. It’s essential to sit down with Senators and MPs and explain one’s position face-to-face. We’re committed to this. And it’s not just independent Senators we seek to talk to, but also the government itself, the opposition and independent MPs.

This costs money, of course, and this is where your membership fees go.

For example, a one-day trip to Canberra (from Melbourne) usually involves:

$500 in airfares, $100 for buses, taxis, etc.

And staying overnight in Canberra (if needed) is expensive during Parliament sitting days—usually starting at around $250 a night (just for basic accommodation!!!)

The government plans to introduce its contentious legislation later this year. To run our advocacy campaign, we anticipate that around eight to ten trips to Canberra will be required before years’ end.

If you’d like to help fund any of those trips, you can do so through our dedicated campaign membership link here.

There’s quite a ‘battle’ going on, with the ACTU (unions) putting out a very aggressive ‘research’ paper which attacks the High Court and is hugely misleading on many fronts. It’s this sort of thing that we need to explain to Senators and MPs otherwise the union agenda will prevail.

We’ll keep you informed.

Labor’s ‘employee-like’ agenda assaults competition law

May 21, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

We informed you on 7 May that the Federal government’s anti-small business plan was progressing. It released a Consultation Paper on 13 April requiring submissions by 12 May. We’ve lodged our submission opposing the planned legislation. The submission is here.

Sorry, but the submission is long—yep, 11,000 words.

The reason for the length is that the government’s plan is presented as if it’s a ‘tweaking’ of law and of limited application. It’s not. It’s a massive assault against the very principles and practices of contract that determine your right to be your own boss, to be self-employed. This can only be understood by understanding the detail.

We’ll explain the detail in shorter ‘chunks’ through this and a series of future news alerts. If you have queries, please contact us.

Competition law ‘protects’ self-employed, small business people

Today we cover the grave threats posed to competition policy and law, the jurisdictional authority of the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC), and the right of people in Australia to earn their income as a small business person.

Competition law regulates commercial contracts.

Employment law regulates employment contracts.

The government’s plan is to allow employment regulation to regulate commercial contracts.

This is a massive step across a fundamental threshold.

The plan is to legislatively redefine commercial contracts to be employment contracts on the alleged grounds that some self-employed people are ‘employee-like’.

This defies the High Court’s declaration in February 2022 (Personnel Case) that:

“The employment relationship with which the common law is concerned must be a legal It is not a social or psychological concept like friendship…”

In effect, the plan is to ‘invent’ a new legislative contract form that is outside common law to thwart common law contract.

This also breaches Australia’s International Labour Organisation obligations where the ILO declared in 2006 that:

“National policy for protection of workers in an employment relationship should not interfere with true civil and commercial relationships…”

Competition clash

The provisions will immediately set up a clash between competition law and employment regulation. Specifically, the ACCC and the Fair Work Commission (FWC) will both be required to regulate commercial contracts that have been declared ‘employee-like’, but each with different and opposing public policy objectives. The ACCC to prevent collusion over pricing and ensure competition. The FWC to facilitate price collusion thereby creating the circumstances for anti-competitive behaviour.

This is being done under the pretext that some self-employed people need ‘protections’.

But protections are already in place:

Sham contracting laws in Australia are possibly the strongest in the world.
The Independent Contractors Act outlaws payment below similar pay to an employee.
‘Beefed up’ unfair contract laws begin in November 2023 and will be handled by the ACCC.
Collective bargaining for the self-employed is already available through the ACCC.
Improved, easier dispute resolution can be made available through small business ombudsmen, etc.
New ‘pay on time’ laws are currently being considered.

We are now undertaking a major advocacy campaign directed at Federal MHRs and Senators. We’ll keep you informed.

Labor’s agenda to outlaw the self-employed – Here it comes!!

May 7, 2023 by Self-Employed Australia

We’ve alerted you in the past to the Albanese government’s plan to deny people the right to be self-employed. It’s an attack upon your basic freedom to decide how you earn your income. That attack plan is now unfolding.

The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) has released a consultation paper on the implementation of Labor’s plan. We’re preparing a detailed submission (due on 12 May). Legislation is set for the second half of this year.

Be very clear. We totally reject this agenda. It’s bad on many fronts. We’ll explain the multiple problems progressively over the following weeks.

We have started talking to Senators and MPs about why this is so bad and should be stopped. We’ll be very actively pushing to defend the right to be self-employed.

We’ve prepared a summary of the DEWR consultation paper. We’ve tried to reflect what they are saying accurately.

In broad summary, Labor’s plan is to:

Treat the commercial contract used by self-employed people as an employment contract.
Regulate self-employed people through the Fair Work Commission, thus creating conflict with commercial law and regulation by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission. The DEWR papers says that this will be done on a limited selective basis. But those limits are as yet unknown.

Frankly, we see our campaign as perhaps the most important one that we have conducted in SEA’s 24-year history. We must attempt to stop this.

We argue that Labor’s plan is a recipe for commercial contract confusion and uncertainty. We find the consultation paper to be a confused hotchpotch itself, as it is forced to weave a path through well-established legal, regulatory and policy principles and practices. This is so because the plan would generate conflict with those principles and practices on a wide scale.

At this stage we seek to understand the detail of Labor’s agenda. The difficulty is that the agenda is wrapped up in seemingly good intentions which mask its true consequences.

Many people have asked us for more information. We suggest that you read our summary first and see what you think. We’ll release our analysis progressively.