Abbott gives small business big focus

Mal Farr
November 15 2012
news.com.au

TONY Abbott will today promise to double small business growth if elected, in a bid to win support from the sector.

The Opposition Leader will pledge to boost the number of small businesses by “around 1.5 per cent” annually. Current growth is averaging 0.7 per cent a year.

The move means Mr Abbott is effectively promising to return small business to the growth rates of the Howard government, before the global financial crisis.

The doubling would produce about 30,000 extras businesses a year, with a significant increase in job numbers.

“Specifically, the focus will be on growing the number of small businesses that employ and provide jobs,” Mr Abbott says in a speech prepared for delivery today to a Menzies Research Centre forum on small business in Melbourne.

“I want to once again see small business providing more than half of the jobs in the private sector since that is where people get a start in life, entrepreneurship is fostered, and innovation happens.”

Both sides of Parliament have been competing for the support of small business which has been one of the last economic sectors to recover from the global financial meltdown, and which is an important job creator.

The Opposition has consistently said its major policy measure would be removal of the carbon price and the flow-on cost to business