Yeah, right.
(Part 2)
By John Counsel
In Part 1, I mentioned how the head of the United Retailers Association accused the Federal and State governments of Australia of betraying small retail tenants. The catchcry, which is firing the imaginations of quite a few small business people, is simple… while BIG business might fund the election coffers of the ruling Liberal Party, it can’t vote. Small business can. And it can vote the government out of office. Even respected radio commentator, the late John Laws, saw fit to comment on the issue, warning the then Prime Minister, on air, that he needed to sit up and pay attention… that something was stirring.
I also mentioned how the small business retail tenants’ representative on the Victorian Government’s abysmally unrepresentative retail tenancy laws committee, utterly disenchanted, had since formed the Small Business Party of Australia. If not seriously intending to become a political party of some consequence, it at least intends to be a bothersome flea biting on the rump of the Federal Government elephant.
The response of the various governments has been pretty predictable. They've ignored it.
Why?
Because they realise that, while something may be stirring, it will soon doze back off to sleep. It’s a storm in a tea cup — a nine-day wonder.
Whilstever the vast majority of small business people are working too long and too hard for too little money, they’ll never have the time, the energy, the resources or the motivation to coalesce into a cohesive and influential political force.Just as Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was an allegorical fantasy, depicting how a handful of self-seeking manipulators and opportunists managed to ride the crest of a mounting wave of popular resentment and take over an entire country, the government of Australia has about as much to worry about as Farmer Brown would if his cows began making noises about overthrowing the system.
Small business is nothing but a powerless herd of dumb cash cows for ALL Australian governments.It poses no political threat because it’s not united. And, if there’s any risk that it might become so, it’s a simple matter of making a few promises, holding a few inquiries, and burying them under a mountain of new regulations (and new bureaucracies) required to implement all the new “initiatives”. Or perhaps by buying off the ringleaders with promises of pre-selection for a safe seat in parliament.
It’s called “Control by Distraction”. Or “Divide and Conquer.”
Politicians, remember, are consummate masters of the art of selling “Barker’s Eggs”. (It’s the only way most of them survive.)
Now… what was I saying about Government “help” again?
Taken from
“Don’t Go Into Small Business
Until You Read This Book!”
by John Counsel
Small Business Books 1996
© 1996, 1997 by John Counsel
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