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Here’s one for the history books. We’re actually complimenting the Victorian government on its ‘gig economy’ policy. Until now we’ve been a strong critic of the Victorian government on this.

In July 2020 the Victorian government released its report into the gig economy. (Just to remind you, we explained what gig work is last week—e.g., Harry Styles, etc). The research from the report is actually very good. (7% of the workforce ‘do’ gig, but less than 0.2% do gig for full-time income. That is, it’s ‘top up’ income for the bulk of gig workers.)

BUT, Recommendation 6 of the Victorian report effectively called for the outlawing of independent contracting (self-employment). However, contrary to this recommendation, the policy now released by the Victorian government is very sensible. It doesn’t do anything to harm self-employed people, doing gig or direct work, but puts in place good protections within a commercial framework.

This is exactly the sort of thing we support and want to see. And it’s completely counter to what the Albanese government has plans to do, which will be highly destructive of small business.

Here’s the Victorian government’s policy. It covers ‘gig’ platforms (e.g., Uber, etc). It has six standards as follows:

Victorian Government gig platform code—Standards

Platforms should provide consultation processes, forums or committees to allow for discussions with non-employee on-demand workers…
Platforms should ensure that the terms and conditions of the applicable contract are clear and able to be understood by non-employee on-demand workers
To assist non-employee on-demand workers to make an informed decision about whether to accept work, platforms should provide them with key information in writing about:

I. what they will earn should they complete a job, and how earnings are calculated
II. typical costs associated with the performance of work
III. their conditions of work
IV. the factors that affect how work is allocated by the platform (such as customer ratings).

Fair and Transparent Independent Dispute Resolution.
Platforms should not inhibit non-employee on-demand workers from freely associating to pursue improved terms and conditions relating to their work arrangements, where permitted by law.
Platforms must comply with their duties under the OHS Act.

Now this is common sense, as opposed to the Albanese government’s planned nonsense.

This Victorian government policy now forms a major part of our advocacy work in the Federal Parliament. We’re actively talking with independent Senators asking them to oppose the Albanese government’s plan. We’re now promoting the Victorian Standards to Senators as the way to go forward.

Our campaign is only just warming up with a full range of trips to Canberra and other places organised and being planned. Many thanks to the support we’ve been receiving from many of you which enables this critical work.

Yes, I know. We don’t have much of a reputation for giving praise to the Australian Taxation Office. In fact we’re probably pretty mean. Here’s us calling the ATO lifeless, frozen dinosaurs and that they must think that the world is flat.

Given our comments, we’ve had people ask us how in the world we managed to have the cancelled ABNs reinstated.

Well, first we had great legal leadership. Here’s John and Paige Findley (our primary legal team) with Annette Pike (she’s on the left) from OutScribe shortly after the agreement to reinstate the ABNs was formalized.

Then, the support of key journalists was critical:

Robert Gottliebsen wrote Vulnerable small business operators denied tax justice and The tax office should collect tax, not attempt to engineer business.
and Grace Collier said Opportunity to make money matters more than holding down a job.

There were also key people in the ATO with whom we had pretty full-on discussions, but we can’t directly identify them. We’ve got to thank those people. The ATO is a complex machine with lots of moving parts, many of which don’t seem to communicate all that well with each other. The ATO people we dealt with on this issue put in a huge effort and were pivotal in the ABN reinstatement outcome. Our thanks to them.

Further, there is the team at OutScribe, the Pike family. They are super-well organized and run a great small business. We worked very tightly with them. They’ve said this about the reinstatement campaign:

We feel very fortunate that we came across SEA. Ken and John have worked tirelessly on behalf of OutScribe and the contractors, with the result that the contractors’ ABNs have been reinstated. OutScribe’s case is still open to investigation with the ATO but we’ve got the SEA in our corner.

Remember: you need to be a member before you have a problem.

We’ll have more information about this story soon.

Common sense about ‘Gig’ from the Victorian government

More thanks on ABN restoration. Including the ATO! Hey?