The numerous problems that need to be addressed
Part 3 of the 3 part series

In this three-part series, I’ve been looking at how governments and unions dip their hands into the pockets of business owners and help themselves to any profits by way of taxes, high labour costs and other forms of revenue. I’ve come up with an idea to fight the unions and the government to stop rorting money from businesses and property developers; maybe it will one day come to fruition and a change will be made.

I’ve talked about business owners and how they pay exorbitant commercial rents to their landlords, with no chance of those fees decreasing. I’ve discussed government and union officials taking money from the taxpayers’ by way of increasing labour costs and taxes of any kind. I’ve even raised the issue of property developers paying for report after report after report just to get councils and various levels of government to look at the proposals.

And now here’s my plan of action.

Shut shop, and keep it shut
For many years the union movement, and employees in general, have always taken the position that, ‘If I don’t like something, I can withdraw my labour and I can sit outside the gate and your business won’t work.’

True. It’s called a strike. But here’s what I think.

I think all business owners in Australia, and even in other parts of the world, should get together and do the same thing. I’m not kidding. Shut your business for a week, just try it for a week. If everybody shut their businesses for seven days and sent everybody home with one week’s unpaid leave, perhaps we would see how long it lasted before the government started jumping up and down and screaming, ‘Good grief, we need to sort this out because the business sector has completely and utterly lost it!’

Do we really need to shut down the entire state or the entire nation, though? No. Not at the same time, at the very least. We still want the economy to grow. It should be a rolled-out shut down. Let’s do one capital city at a time, followed by a regional area. Then rinse, wash, and repeat. I tell you what, it won’t be long before it all stops, and then you’re going to get some common sense from the Labor Party, the lefties, the greenies, and the Liberal Party depending on whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican. Wherever you are in the world it matters not, but there are those people on the left, those people on the right, and then those in the middle who jump up and down about environmental, social and other issues.

Another idea – business delegates!
Why not have a business owners’ union delegate go to local councils and negotiate the rates they would charge the businesses of that locality and on planning matters to reduce delay and ridiculous imposts to doing business?

Seriously, why does this not happen? Let’s have that same delegate go to state governments and negotiate away some of the ridiculous money-sucking, time-wasting practises they have. Get rid of them. Let’s get business people having the same strength of voice that unions have, because the business owner has a lot more at stake than some hours in a day being exchanged for money.

I haven’t seen one environmental issue yet that’s ever contributed to somebody’s bottom line in a positive way apart from an environmental scientist. I’ve seen a lot of them contribute in a negative way, but nothing ever in a positive way, so if the green movement of the world wants to have all these wonderful ideas and, ‘Save the plant,’ that’s all well and good, but who’s paying for it? Somebody has to pay for it, it’s not free, and it’s either going to come out of your taxes, or it’s going to come out of the government purse, which is really your tax anyway. At some point, somebody has to foot the bill, and this is one of the biggest problems I have seen in government.

It’s definitely one of the biggest problems I’ve seen with business. Businesses don’t know what their cost bases are and they can’t articulate it – government doesn’t care because as far as they’re concerned, they’ve got jobs, they’re on the public purse, they’re getting paid handsomely, and they’re flying around in their cars and their jets. But at the other end of it, there is somebody having to pay the bill, and it’s people like you and me – business owners – who just keep getting raped, pillaged and plundered by the system.

It’s high time the business community got together and actually stood up as one voice and made one hell of a noise to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore, that’s enough.’ And we need to stop all the rubbish that goes on and all the nonsense that comes out of the mouths of our politicians, because all they do is pay lip service and not do anything constructive for anyone else but themselves.

I rest my case.