The Rudd Government and SME's

Evans: If they are truly serious then this is vital and should be linked to providing broadband access for all small businesses. Government will then be able to reduce the compliance burden for small business and by then have an all of government approach to compliance via internet portals specifically targeted to small business. If they don’t, then why bother?

Moon: This is very important. Right now in Australia 30 percent of SMEs who trade internationally, and only nine percent of SMEs who trade domestically are open for business online. They have great websites and brochureware but Australian companies are potentially missing out on a slice of what is estimated to be a $4 trillion micro economy. The internet and sites such as YouTube are repositories of creative talent and there are numerous examples of bands and singers being picked up by global record companies from their ‘video hits’ online. We are also seeing an increasing use of the internet for activist campaigning and democratic comment. It is essential that all Australians have access to these new media forms to ensure they can participate as citizens. Providing infrastructure is the first step. It is also important to help SME entrepreneurs recognise how the internet can help them be successful in their businesses.

MacDonald: The real challenge has been and will be the size of our continent. With our global competitors regularly improving the capacity of their broadband systems to handle complex tasks we must set our performance bar high. Fibre to the home rather than just to the node is the new benchmark. Improving broadband is about the right of all Australians to participate in the modern economy. Clearly where the market does not deliver there is a role for government and we welcome that.

Ruthven: To have anything less than 100 megabits per second in Australia is a joke (it’s currently around 28 megabits per second on ADLS2+). My company is totally online, as an online database company working around the world, and a big question for us is can we stay in Australia with the primitive broadband we’ve got? We may have to look at shipping headquarters offshore unless broadband comes up out of this third world category where it is now. It’s just dreadful. Currently we can’t send video information to customers because they have to wait for about an hour to get it. For the previous authorities to say that Australians don’t want high-speed broadband is ludicrous. I hope that we businesses keep the government to their promise and to give us broadband suitable for the 21^st century, because we ain’t got it! And I would rate this as being even more important than education, because you can move education across the network to people’s homes and work.

Edwards: Large parts of the third world have quite good broadband; better than we do. We’re well behind and it seems to me the government has to be inflexibly committed to getting us a better system and it has to do so with or without Telstra—it can’t wait for Telstra’s decisions in that area.

And how will our economy fare under the new Labor Government?

Gahan: Assuming it lives up to the policy hype, and it can keep inflation under control, I expect the economy will continue at a cracking pace with little change from the rate of growth that has been a hallmark of the Howard years.

Hourn: This is the $64,000 question. Certainly the Government is faced with major challenges on the economic front. They have already adopted the age-old tactic of blaming their predecessors, but political tactics and economic solutions are two very different things. A smaller economy like Australia will inevitably be subject to effects from economic conditions in larger economies such as China and the US. At home the challenge is to put the brakes on inflation, without allowing higher interest rates to reduce spending and consumer and business confidence to levels where we risk a slide towards recession.

MacDonald: There is a tough set of circumstances before policy makers at the moment—interest rate pressures and global instability will make the period ahead a challenging time. The Australian economy is finely calibrated and it will require all of the new Government’s skill to ensure we see a continuation of the 17 years of economic growth we have had to date.

Ruthven: I think because both Rudd and Swan know they have a horrible record in the economy, hopefully this is the spur to prove that in the first time since Chifley they can run a good labor government. (Chifley was the last one that did, and he went out in 1949.) So I remain far more optimistic than pessimistic on this one.

Edwards: We’ve got some challenges—higher inflation is a challenge, the downturn of the US is a challenge, the fact that we’re running at the limits of our capacity is a challenge—but I’m confident the government is aware of all of these problems and attentive to them.