Small business urged to detail power struggles

Clancy Yeates
March 20, 2012
The Age

Small Business Minister Brendan O’Connor is willing to hear complaints about dealing with big companies.

SMALL Business Minister Brendan O’Connor says he is open to examining whether big companies are given an unfair advantage over smaller ones.

Amid complaints that big companies, such as shopping centre owners, routinely exploit their power in negotiations with smaller companies, Mr O’Connor said small-business owners should come forward with evidence.

The comments come as Labor and the opposition fight for small business support, with the two biggest parties trying to position themselves as the party of small entrepreneurs.

After being appointed this month, Mr O’Connor said relations between big and small business had already been raised in discussions with industry. ”If there’s a compelling case to be made about the relationship small business has with big business and whether in fact we’ve got the balance right, I’m very happy to listen to their concerns,” Mr O’Connor said.
”We are pro-competition and we want to see that in the marketplace small businesses can thrive. If they put to me a case that for a variety of reasons they have challenges because of the way small business intersects with big business then I will be looking at it.”

Small-business owners have long complained that the law fails to protect their interests during dealings with the big end of town.

Council of Small Business Australia executive director Peter Strong said a key irritation was that the laws assumed small and big businesses had equal bargaining power. ”If you’re one person and you’re negotiating with a multinational it’s considered equal, but obviously it’s not,” Mr Strong said. ”A small business will almost never defeat a big business in a contract dispute. It’s about fairness, that’s all.”

Such disputes commonly arise over agreements between shopping centre owners and tenants, he said.

The Coalition has pledged to tackle some of these concerns by extending unfair contract provisions – which only apply to agreements between large firms and consumers – to small business.

Separately, Mr O’Connor said another key concern of companies he had spoken to was the high dollar. Aside from cutting company taxes for small business from July, Mr O’Connor said the government was also ”happy to look at other ways to relieve the burden” of a high dollar. ”The high dollar’s affecting manufacturing, tourism and other sectors, and of course there are a lot of small businesses in those sectors,” he said.

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