No. There are a stack of people with good ideas, but the cost of the legal & expected typical set-up is more than they can afford. A one person small business run from home can cost $20k before you even start the good idea. Starting up should come at a start-up cost relative to the profit. And why would you want to employ anyone with the costs of super, worker's comp, holiday leave, long service, extra insurance, "don't-die paper work" & "why work when the government pays you not to work". China is busy for a reason.

It's hard to say, I'm pretty realistic in my expectations of what the government can do to help my business. It's all too easy to blame governments for our own problems. Generally, creating a stable economy is the best way of getting customers to spend money.

No. The government is a business. They derive their income from other businesses and the average working person. With the number of small businesses struggling to keep afloat any additional pressure from governmental regulation/red tape, GST, IAS, PAYG, Super, WorkCover, Business Registrations, will shut them down. Encourage small business? No. Did you know that in 2011 46% of people were employed in small businesses? Again, the statistics of 2011 show that almost 96% of all registered businesses were small businesses, 3.8% were medium businesses and less than 1% large businesses. Small business is big business to the government. Yes, it sucks that although we are all doing it tough, we still have to 'pay our dues'. Not sure about your business, but imagine if the government said, just for one BAS period, "pay your bills rather than the ATO", how much better the entire economy would be? But they won't. Politicians *need* to be paid more than those doing the work - i.e.: us - the small business. Bureaucracy gets in the way of the big picture. Look after the little guy and everyone wins, but the government doesn't see it that way. End of rant :)

This survey is only there for people to have a slug at government - they always will no matter how hard government tries to help them.

I think the present Government is doing more than the previous one. But will it ever be enough for some people. I think the biggest problem in business is that the media love bad news. They are more about manufacturing news than reporting it. Negativity in the media is a big cause of poor business confidence. That said, the Tax dept see small business as an easy target. That will never change. They are the biggest thorn in the side of any small business. When you get penalized for working harder, increasing red tape, there is as much discouragement as there is encouragement. 

No

Absolutely not. They are working only for the big end of town. They allow the Woolworths and Coles duopoly to move unchecked into every aspect of Australian economic life, the big 4 banks make world-record profits off the backs of mortgage holders and they allow rapacious franchisors to steal money from naive mom-and-pop small business investors. No, this government does nothing for SMALL business.

In a word - NO. never have and never will. Governments do not even understand what small business is.

There is a lot of merit in the argument that small business should get more incentives to help them grow and thus solve the unemployment problem. But it could be argued that they are already doing this by the different levels of taxation - small companies pay less tax than big companies (generally). I actually think that this government is tryng hard to help all businesses, including small business far better an Labor - all they want to do is give hand outs to lazy and undeserving people and penalise employers for working hard for the betterment of everybody, including themselves of course.