Business

As 2011 fast comes to an end it’s timely to reflect on the significant policy reforms that gave small businesses a helping hand during the year. Central to these reforms has been the move towards Small Business Commissioners around the country.

The year started off with the South Australian Small Business Minister, Tom Koutsantonis, launching a period of wide ranging consultation with small businesses in that State.

With South Australia’s draft small business commissioner reforms unveiled in February and explained during information briefing sessions across Adelaide and regional South Australia, there was considerable excitement amongst small business and farmers that they would finally have an independent person to turn to in the event of a dispute with a larger business.

Continue reading "Zumbo’s wrap: What 2011 meant for small business" »

Leadership has become one of the central questions of our time. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the demand for strong authoritative leadership has been palpable. I remember participating in a NATO sponsored workshop in 2002 on the psychological impact of terrorism.

One of the challenges thrown at the participants was to imagine they were facing a major incident akin to 9/11 and to decide who could be trusted with the task of informing the public about what had happened and what needed to be done. In other words, who would provide communicative leadership at a time when society was facing an unprecedented catastrophe?

The very posing of this question caught most of the participants unaware. It was evident that many of the elected leaders of European nations would prove unsuitable for this task. Could the Italian people trust the reassurances of a Berlusconi? How would the Greeks or the Belgians respond to the instructions of their prime ministers?

Continue reading "Leadership, liberty and the crisis of authority" »

Think Kim Kardashian is nothing more than a walking, talking exercise in narcissism and lip gloss?

After all, she’s a reality TV starlet famous for having thought it was a good idea to film herself having sex with a little known rapper - and for her eye-poppingly clingy dresses. But don’t be too quick to write Kim off. Because if you dig down beneath the trowelled-on layers of makeup you’ll find just the kind of modern woman who should get the tick of approval from the sisterhood.

Don’t be confused by the drag queen eyes and slightly terrifying décolletage -  Kim Kardashian is a savvy entrepreneur, someone who speaks her mind and is vocally proud of her curvy figure.

Continue reading "Kim Kardashian 2: Things to admire about Kim" »

Much of the public commentary around the Qantas dispute has been so undergraduate that you would think it had been authored by the people at Occupy Wall Street. But it is Qantas itself which invited much of the negative coverage by not thinking through its tactics last week ahead of the dramatic events of the weekend.

This dispute has at its centre a pretty simple question – does Qantas management have the right to manage Qantas? Or should Tony Sheldon from the Transport Workers Union have veto power over everything from how many staff the airline employs, when and where its aircraft hangars are built, who maintains its fleet, to whether it is allowed to expand into Asia?

I am not an aviation writer but at a guess I would say that as a former senior executive at Aer Lingus and the successfully expansionist boss of the fledgling airline Jetstar, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce knows a bit more about running airlines than Tony Sheldon.

Continue reading "The Qantas dispute is not about Alan Joyce’s salary" »

Finally, we have a government willing to stand up for small business in the face of hysterical opposition from the big end of town and their legal advisers.

Last week the South Australian Labor Government successfully got its small business commissioner reforms through the Parliament. Those reforms had been subject to a frenzied attack by elements of the big end of town and their legal advisers. Despite such a self-interested and panic-stricken campaign the reforms secured the numbers in the South Australian Upper House.

Like most Upper Houses in Australia, the SA Legislative Council is a place where the Government lacks the numbers and, accordingly, needs to convince the minor parties and independents of the merits of all government initiatives.

Continue reading "WANTED: A tough cop on the small business beat" »

In just a few short days, four giant demons astride winged, skeletal steeds are expected to swoop from the sky and hurl every man, woman and child into the dark chasm of the infinite.

“Curse you, Apple!” the terrified masses will scream as CEO Tim Cook desperately points out the improved 8-megapixel camera and upgraded dual-core processor.

But they won’t have it, those Apple customers. They wanted an iPhone 5. Instead, they got an iPhone 4S and now everybody has to watch as palm trees and baby lambs are cast into fiery oblivion.

Continue reading "We’re all suckers for a good marketing ploy" »

Another week, another Apple product feted as the Second Coming in gadget form. Wait, hang on a minute. . .

Apple are pretty good at hype, but it seems like they’ve been a little too good at it this week. Apple fan-boys and -girls (and shareholders) were roundly disappointed this morning with the launch of a slightly improved iPhone 4, the 4S. They were let down after whipping themselves up into a frenzy of iPhone 5 speculation over the past week.

But give it 9 days, when the smartphone is set to be released here, and you’re sure to see Apple-maniacs queueing from one end of your nearest capital city to the other to get their hands on the new smartphone. Their existing year-old iPhones will just get tossed. That’s a feature of Apple products. Your latest whizz-bang gizmo is always just a few short months away from being made obsolete by a product with only slightly more whizz and a pinch more bang.

Continue reading "An Apple a day, then Jobs wants you to chuck it away" »

We always hear about how important small business is to the economy, but we don’t often hear about governments standing up for small businesses when it comes to effective competition and consumer laws. Why? Quite simply because small businesses are all too often the ignored members of our society.

The small business sector is a big employer and small business people put in some of the longest working hours operating their businesses. They can be super efficient because it’s their money on the line. There are no corporate overheads or bloated performance bonuses because the money they make is generally put back into the business.

Small businesses survive on their excellent customer service and help drive innovation and product choice in their chosen areas of the economy. While they keep the big players honest, they can be victims of abuses of market or contractual power by those big players.

Continue reading "Small businesses aren’t muppets. They’re a BIG deal." »

Holy crap, Ralph Norris has resigned. Well, I guess if you were Ralph Norris with all that pressure and all that money, you’d be looking for some R & R too. Still. The world will never be the same.

According to the legend of Ralph Norris, for a while there they called him ‘Chuck’, which is a sissy kind of name for a dude who grew a beard in utero and burns it off with a withering gaze each morning. And then every five minutes.

The Commonwealth Bank chairman David Turner described him as “outstanding and fearless”. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of Ralph Norris.

Continue reading "Norris’ retirement a roundhouse kick in the guts" »

This is an edited extract of a moving and deeply personal speech a man called Ian gave at the launch of the St Vincent de Paul Society’s CEO Sleepout. The actual event is tonight. Visit the website if you want to help out.

You’ve never met me, you don’t know me.  My name is Ian and I was an addict for 15 years. I started when I was 15 when a dealer dropped a packet of heroin in front of me and my mate. Three days later we were injecting. The dealer looked after us.  He gave us a job which was to carry his little wraps of tinfoil for him - it was my first job.

He and his dealer mates were my role models at the time. My dad was alcoholic and had left early on and my mum struggled to raise me and my three sisters. All but one sister became drug addicts too. 

Continue reading "I was a homeless drug addict. Then I hit rock bottom." »

The whole airline business is built on insanely small margins. So it’s hardly a surprise to learn overnight that Jetstar makes its pittance of a profit not from ticket sales but from the sale of muffins and other “food” on board.

Note the inverted commas around the word food. As American satirist Dave Barry once said: “Airline food is not intended for human consumption. It’s intended as a form of in-flight entertainment, wherein the object is to guess what it is, starting with broad categories such as ‘mineral’ and ‘linoleum’.”

Overpriced food aside, Australian budget airlines are not all that bad. Sure, Jetstar’s a bit bogan and Virgin Blue’s a bit like a branch of the Church of the Almighty Cult of His Supreme Hipness Richard Branson. But mostly, they’re OK.

Continue reading "Money for muffins and your tix for free" »

The Federal budget highlights one great need for small business, and that is a rational coherent national strategy.

This budget and indeed the last 20 federal budgets have included a whole range of good and bad measures for small business people. But there has never been a strategy to underpin those measures.

There has never been a real statement of aims and objectives that we want to achieve. There has never been a documented comprehensive vision for the families who earn their living from their own business and who employ almost five million other people, and underpin our economic health.

Continue reading "Hey Feds, make small business your business" »

The carbon debate at the moment is a bit like the story of Chicken Little. Just as Chicken Little declared that the sky was falling, we’re seeing a lot of people in the business community claiming that the introduction of a carbon price will spell disaster for Australian exports, jobs and industries.

(We cheated here and went for the Hokey Pokey rather than Henny Penny. But the clip is worth a re-visit.)

BHP Billiton and Xstrata want protection on coal exports; BlueScope Steel and OneSteel want steel manufacturing exempted from a carbon price; Woodside Petroleum want LNG exports to be exempted from a carbon price.  To top it off, we’ve had the Australian Workers Union declare its opposition if a single job is lost as a result of a carbon price. And the Australian Food and Grocery Council is now calling for exemptions and running the line that food prices will rise.

You would be forgiven for thinking the Chicken is right.

Continue reading "The Chicken Littles will have egg on their faces" »

“OK before we get going, I’d like to unpack some issues. What I want from you is blue sky thinking, people. A brain dump. Try to wrap your minds around our mission-critical objectives. We’re creating a new design language. There are some terrific synergies right now. This is a unique opportunity to value-add for our stakeholders. Think of it as a paradigm shift. Your time starts now.”

Is it just me or is there an awful lot of corporate speak around at the moment?

It’s worse than two years ago, when Don Watson wrote his third anti-jargon book, Bendable Learnings.

Continue reading "Quit leveraging your dialogue" »

This week, we have seen two incredible women on television who have both made us feel proud to be Australian.

One is Anna Bligh, with her outpouring of emotion, reminding Queenslanders and the rest of the nation that people from the sunshine state are “the people they breed tough, north of the border.”  The other is Oprah.Yes, Oprah.

In Sydney, we are struggling to harness a sense of pride.

Continue reading "How Oprah could salvage Sydney’s pride" »

Change and innovation are always feared, and therefore always resisted. 

When the first ATMs were introduced, the banking unions fought against them because they feared it would mean the end of tellers (who can forget the lines we used to endure at banks in the bad old days). Instead, we saw the rise of electronic banking with the banks now involved in almost every transaction.  When the video player was first introduced, film industry experts predicted the end of cinemas, but today we are seeing a resurgence in cinema attendance numbers because the industry was forced to become more innovative, and now delivers a significantly enhanced customer experience via new developments such as 3D.

In recent weeks, some of Australia’s larger retailers have vigorously argued that the ability of Australians to buy online will destroy retailing in Australia, with thousands of jobs going off-shore, and that we need to tax the internet to “create a level playing field”.  This is despite the fact that less than 3 per cent of all retail sales in Australia are transacted online!

Continue reading "Why good retailers will survive the internet" »

People love to complain about the customer service we get here in Australia. In general though, I think it’s pretty good. Especially after spending time overseas where attending to a customer sometimes looks like it ranks below flirting with co-workers or reading the paper.

But do you reckon customer service is now going one step too far. To me, Aussie businesses are going to the extremes of refined customer service when all we really want is the elusive middle ground.

On one hand there is the long-winded and irritating, small-talk fuelled barrage of over-customer service. The one where the kid on the other end of the phone asks for your whole life story.

Continue reading "When customer service is just too good to be true" »

If you’re reading this consider yourself lucky. You’ve managed to find time out of a stressful work day to squeeze in a moment of media consumption despite a new study finding we’re all working way too hard and far too much.

The Australian Institute survey Long time, no see will no doubt provoke a round of handwringing from social researchers using it as proof that Australia is slave to a brutal corporate beast that eats up families and destroys “community”.  This will be accompanied by calls to move toward a more European model of work, replete with biweekly cheese fairs in our new found tight knit villages.

The glaring problems with this survey and others like it are not the results, but the fact that there’s no recognition of the gap between what people say they want, what they actually want and what they’re willing to do about it.

Continue reading "Are we working too much or just whingeing more?" »

Our major banks are not like other businesses.

If a boat builder in Taren Point, or a plastics manufacturer in Chipping Norton or a motel owner on the Central Coast of NSW gets into trouble, there will be no taxpayer bail out. There will be no funding guarantee to support their continued access to credit. There will be no Reserve Bank to act as their own on-call lender of last resort to see them through their troubles.

The GFC proved that our four big banks are too important to fail. They know it and the taxpayers know it. The banks may be a legitimately protected species, but that does not give them a license to be precious, striking out at anyone who would dare raise questions about how they do business.

Continue reading "Banks can complain all they want but Hockey’s right" »

There’s been a curious role reversal between Channel 10 and Channel Nine in the past 5 years or so, made even more compelling with James Packer’s new 18 percent stake in 10.

The networks used to be opposites of the TV spectrum – Nine the heavy-weights in both budget and exposure – Ten the cut-price youngsters.  Nine had a stable of headline stars. Ten was a quiet achiever. Nine had a formidable newsroom of senior journalists. Ten had a bunch of bright, hungry 20-somethings.

Then they started morphing into each other. Nine began carving away the newsroom budget, chunk by chunk. A lot of fat was shed, then a bit more. Young, ambitious 20-somethings started to feature in the 6pm line up. The tone changed from stable, solid (and sometimes predictable) to a more American, flashy, invigorated product.

Continue reading "Nine, Ten, countdown to Channel Nineteen" »

The other day I was presenting at a conference on sustainability, and wondered what I was doing there.  I clock up more air-miles than a rare bald headed eagle, have an unsustainable lifestyle, and don’t own a rainwater tank.  Don’t get me wrong I was flattered to be asked to talk, and trust I contributed to the conference, but it got me thinking. 

I can’t go past a discussion on a cultural, environmental, or societal issue these days without seeing an ‘ad-guy’ (and unfortunately it’s very often males) proffering their opinion on what will solve our latest ill.

Like it or not, the advertising industry is being pulled into all manner of communities with the hope they can solve the world’s issues. And like it or not, the world is now taking the ‘ad guy’ seriously. 

Continue reading "Since when did advertising become respectable?" »

The Packer name back in the public media fold has caught everyone by surprise. There is a temptation to start dusting off analogies to his father Kerry Packer and his love of Channel Nine; the proprietor who might be given to bark down the phone ordering changes to that night’s line-up.

There’s nothing like a mogul roaming the media landscape. Ten was boring until now thanks to an open share registry - an entity in the hands of fund managers who were more interested in EBITDA and price to earnings ratios than the alchemy of making a rip-snorting TV show.

Indeed, Ten boasts the most successful TV franchise ever in Masterchef but the thing that has frustrated shareholders is that it hasn’t really translated into stellar gains in the share price _ Ten’s cost structure has risen of late and it’s share price has taken a whack.

Continue reading "Is the ghost of Kerry hanging over Ten today" »

Competition in corporate Australia has always been fierce.  Everyone wants the best people, systems, products and services.

But behind the smiles and claims to the contrary, everyone from the Chairman down wants to get one up on their direct competitors on every metric that matters. 

At stake are bonuses, bragging rights and most important of all, continued survival in the corporate jungle.

Continue reading "Indigenous skills: let market forces triumph" »

Six more IKEA stores might sound like a bad thing - particularly if you’re the sort that doesn’t enjoy its giant maze-like outlets - but rival retailers may be secretly pleased the furniture giant is expanding.

Like retail remora fish, these smaller retailers make a living feeding off the Swedish DIY’s back, even as it devours a juicy chunk of the homewares market.

And the key is our instatiable desire to beautify our nests, combined with the sheer drawing power of IKEA.

Continue reading "The IKEA honey trap and why we love it" »

I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but there’s a dangerous outbreak of M.I.S. in Australia at the moment.

It first struck the upper echelons of the business community, but has since trickled down to middling players in the showbiz, media and legal fraternities. Like many trends it began in North America, where its sufferers include actor William H. Macy and former President George W. Bush. 

It’s Middle Initial Syndrome. And it’s coming to a business card near you.

Continue reading "Tracey L Spicer reflects on the rise of the middle initial" »

Regardless of the outcome of this hung Parliament scenario; business and vested interest groups will be the winners in the medium to long term.

Forget the current wobbliness on the stock exchange and the suspension of investment and trade by some mining companies and multi-nationals; the opportunities posed for those wishing to engage with the independents and the incoming Government far outweigh the risks.

Continue reading "A hung parliament is good news for business" »

Many Australian’s are becoming increasingly concerned by unchecked corporate power, a view cemented by the recent mining sector campaign which within just a few months resulted in a sitting Prime Minister being rolled and billions cut from their tax bills.

Nearly fifty years ago, Labor was attacked for being run by “faceless men” when the leadership team of Calwell and Whitlam were photographed peaking through a doorway, waiting for a room of unelected party officials to dictated their policy.

These days it seems a whole new group has claimed the role, wielding a disproportionate influence on the levers of power in Canberra, with both sides of politics appearing beholden to the will of the corporate sector.

Continue reading "Big money still opens big doors to our politicians" »

Is your CEO or director on “Out of Office AutoReply” this month? If so, chances are that they are far from the southern hemisphere. August is holiday season in the North and with the long standing link to Australia’s heritage, it’s a good bet that there is a European and probably London stopover on the way. 

Having just returned to Australia via the climate policy desert of the USA, the European climate change landscape couldn’t be in starker contrast. Whilst American media seems destined to miss the BP oil spill as an opportunity to get their citizens to connect the dots between fossil fuel pollution of all types and drive their own leaders to climate action, Europe is a different story.

In the European climate world, business meetings and conferences talk of how to deal with climate change and when, not if? They talk of the risks of extending pollution reduction targets even further, not of avoiding targets at all. Climate deniers are forced into backrooms and dare not raise their heads far for fear of ridicule. A career in UK climate denial is accompanied by US and Australian visa applications because jobs are thin on the ground there.

Continue reading "European climate attitudes can teach us a lot" »

This is not a facetious question. Boards all over Australia, those same boards whose population includes just 9 per cent women, will be looking without envy at David Jones this morning after publicist Kristy Fraser-Kirk announced she was suing the company for $37 million.

Fraser-Kirk was the young woman who’s complaint of sexual harassment against then-CEO Mark McInnes prompted his sacking in May.

A lot of people in the corporate world would be thinking this morning “they sacked him, what more does she want?”

Continue reading "What should the DJs board have done instead?" »

Not since Paul Keating introduced compulsory superannuation contributions in the early 1990s has there been such an important opportunity to change the way Australians think about saving for their retirement.

This urgent need for change is magnified when Australians are asked how much they actually know about their superannuation. A recent survey by Suncorp Life found 49 per cent of us don’t understand our super, and 30 per cent of us don’t believe our super is even our own money. Annual changes to the superannuation system are also a constant and frustrating occurrence. That’s why it’s vital for the Government to get it right this time.

The results of the much-anticipated Cooper Review announced last week urge a range of sweeping reforms to superannuation, and herald an exciting new era for the industry. The question is whether the Government is prepared to do what’s needed to simplify the system, and restore Australian’s confidence in superannuation.

Continue reading "We might save more in super if we knew where it went" »

David Jones is reeling this morning after Chief Executive Mark McInnes quit after a 25-year-old female employee made a complaint about his conduct at a company function.

The Board is currently conducting a long, and amazingly frank, press conference, where Chairman Bob Savage has addressed the issue of what impact the scandal might have on the venerable David Jones brand.

Mr Savage says the David Jones name has been around since 1838 and its retail reputation was unlikely to be shaken. Would a harrassment scandal like this make you less likely to shop at the department store chain?

Cross-code recruiting of footballers seems to be the new fad in Australian sport.

If sought-after players can run, leap, mark a ball, evade opponents and draw big crowds, they are hot property on the footy code market.If these players show a wiff of interest in switching codes to earn the big bucks, they could be snapped up by emerging teams.

With the Aussie sporting landscape changing, thanks to new AFL teams Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney (GWS) plus rugby union team Melbourne Rebels, it seems anything goes.

Continue reading "Injuries likely to hurt cross-code recruits" »

It seems like every other week there is a new poll giving us an approval rating for our PM, or a new piece of research providing insights into everything from the packaging of tuna to whether red wine is good for you or not.

There are thousands of research topics bubbling away around the country, yet they all have one thing in common – they all rely on ordinary people to give honest opinions on what they think.

Market research is a growing industry in Australia, thanks largely to the many ordinary Australians out there who pick up the phone, fill in an online survey or attend a focus group to have their say on a whole range or products and issues each week.

Continue reading "The power you might not realise you had" »

The public is doing it. Even the PM is doing it. And the workforce don’t get a fair deal either. No matter how hard we try to warm to them, we just can’t help resenting the banks.

A new survey out today shows that the level of satisfaction with banks is low and that 63% people think that banks are getting worse at balancing profits and affordability.

Is it just another version of a national tall poppy syndrome, or are banks like those irritating over-achievers at school who just rubbed us up the wrong way for being obnoxious and successful? Or maybe there is a more simple reason – they can’t help acting badly.

Continue reading "Top 5 reasons we all love to hate the banks" »

If you haven’t already seen the graphic below take a minute to have a look.

This is an explanation the United States’ plan for victory in Afghanistan, and formed part of a PowerPoint presentation given by the US Military to some of its top brass.

This PowerPoint presentation is not only emblematic of what may have gone wrong in Afghanistan, but, without wanting to sound too alarmist, what’s gone wrong with the way we’re being taught to think.

Continue reading "How PowerPoint slides ruined the world" »

Hands up everyone who never sent an email which, if made public, would cause themselves and their employer massive embarrassment.

The particularly modern form of humiliation has the added bonus of many of them being recorded electronically, putting them beyond dispute. It’s not someone’s recollection of events - it’s Microsoft’s.

Investment banking firm Goldman Sachs is the latest to cop it, with emails from executives talking about “shitty” products they were selling with one hand and betting against with the other. The most sensational are the emails from Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre to his girlfriend referring to “Frankenstein” products invented via “intellectual masturbation” being sold to widows and orphans. Not much room here for the traditional defence of being taken out of context.

Continue reading "A few stupid emails do not an industry conspiracy make" »

Remember the Seinfeld episode where George is slugged $75 because he cancels an appointment with a physio within her arbitrarily decreed 24-hour exclusion zone? “24 hours for all cancellations … It’s our policy,’’ he’s told. When the physio subsequently cancels an appointment with George, also within 24 hours, he demands she pay him $75. “I have a policy …,’’ he tells her.

A man ahead of his time, George Constanza. Who do these people think they are? And why do we meekly acquiesce to such injustices? Needless to say I have my own particular axe to grind, which I’ll get to in a minute, but more broadly this is a call to all self-respecting citizens to stand up to the sort of professional and corporate bullying that insists “their” time is valuable and our time is worthless.

While the cancellation “policy” (consider how often bastardry is cloaked in that word: refugee policy, indigenous affairs policy, tax policy, mental health policy) is the most despicable example, it’s far from the only one. How about the four-hour “window” when you want to get some service – a phone connection, say – installed or a courier package delivered?

Continue reading "Sorry, they’re the rules: my new policy for poor service" »

Somewhere in Sydney a punter is $30 million richer and doesn’t yet know.  NSW Lotteries is trying hard to find them. They’ve publicised it in the media and spoken discreetly to the agent who sold the ticket.  They’re keen to break the good news to their very lucky customer, and sincere and thorough in their efforts to do it.

This time next week the Lotteries will be owned by a private corporation which has also bought itself the right to keep that prize if they can’t find the person.

Leaving aside that this appears to be against the law that made the sell-off of Lotteries possible, how hard would you try to find a winner if you could pocket the money yourself if you can’t find them?  How hard would you make it to claim a prize?

Continue reading "Corporations don’t need to win the big one" »

With consumers already being let down so badly on grocery issues by Mr Rudd and his Competition Minister Craig Emerson, you’d think that they would do better on basic consumer law issues. Well, you’d be very disappointed as Minister Emerson has presided over a continual watering down of consumer rights in the vital area of unfair contract terms.

Unfair contract terms may prevent the sale of items like this

We know or should know about unfair contract terms. We more commonly know them as the “fine print” in consumer contracts. These are the nasty terms of the contract that stack the contract well and truly in favour of the larger party, commonly a big business. Banks use unfair contract terms as do mobile phone companies. Car hire companies and your local gym also try to stack the contract terms in their favour.

Unfair contract terms are also found in contracts that small businesses may have with larger businesses. Small businesses also deal with banks, mobile phone companies and car hire companies. In this regard, small businesses are also consumers of basic goods and services. Sadly, small businesses can also get hit with unfair contract terms in franchise agreements, retail leases and supply agreements.

Continue reading "Buyer beware cause business is getting its way" »

Everyone loves to hate call centres, but it’s time to give them a break because they generally provide a convenient and effective service.

If you’re foaming at the mouth right now thinking that the ten minutes you’ve just spent on hold being told “your call is important” was neither convenient nor effective, consider the alternative.

In many cases it’s a drive down to your local shops, a few minutes spent hunting for a parking spot and then a few more walking past shops before you get to the retail outlet where you want to conduct a transaction.

Continue reading "Don’t take your bad day out on a call centre worker" »

“In this world,” Benjamin Franklin famously declared, “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” A few hundred years on, corporate Australia seems hell-bent on making a liar out of him.

Death is still holding out -so no need to fear a business-suited army of the undead just yet—but the taxman has well and truly been given the slip, with billions of dollars from the public purse funneled through loopholes, lurks and perks.

Treasury figures have revealed that over the last decade more than half of all companies paid less than five per cent of their total income in tax: a far cry from the hefty amount individual taxpayers are slugged.

Continue reading "Debunking the myths of corporate tax" »

When Virgin Blue finally announced that John Borghetti would take the reins of the airline in May, the only question was why they took so long to arrive at this no-brainer.

Virgin Blue’s search for a new chief executive has, for the past five or so months, been the same story written one hundred different ways. Borghetti, initially seen by pundits as the Cinderella for the discount carrier’s slipper, fell quickly out of contention in late 2009 after the Board seemed to keep the search rolling despite his availability. They kept us all off the scent with remarkable ease.

And why should anyone care? Well the company has never had a change of CEO since co-founder Brett Godfrey took the helm from the get-go in 2000. Despite ten years of very impressive growth, Virgin Blue has up to fairly recently been somewhat of a poor cousin to the far larger Qantas and lacking the ultra-cheap cost structure of Jetstar.

Continue reading "Virgin’s gain damages the Flying Kangaroo" »

Like a teenage son with busted car or a call centre operator who rings at dinner time, you only hear from Kerry Stokes when he wants something.

Billionaires - real ones, not the fly-by-nighters who appear suddenly on the BRW rich list and disappear just as quickly one year later - are notoriously private people. But years can pass without a significant public performance from Stokes.

Sure, he pops up every six months to deliver another set of opaque accounts from the Seven Network. But you know he only does that much because he has to. (Seven, being a listed company, has a few shareholders other than Stokes himself.)

Continue reading "A rare sighting of the lesser-spotted Kerry Stokes" »

THE German or Japanese languages may have one, but there is no word in English which accurately conveys the crushing, overwhelming sense of misery felt at the end of a good holiday.

It doesn’t seem to matter if you’ve had one week off or four, whether you love or hate your job. The first day back at work always feels like a special kind of hell when you wistfully recall where you were and what you were doing a week or so prior.

Talking to a mate yesterday, who like me was on his first day back after a three-week break, it struck us how so much of this dislike of modern work doesn’t stem from some irrational hatred of having a job. Instead, it’s to do with a justifiable sense of frustration at the way we are often compelled to do our jobs.

Continue reading "Too busy holding meetings to do any actual work" »

Following the success of my colleague Paul Colgan’s call for entries to the Punch Political Dictionary, today we’re launching a parallel appeal for entries to the Punch Business Dictionary – those words and phrases that tripped off the tongue during the corporate gyrations of the past year.

The good folk at Macquarie Dictionary have offered six suggestions. Here are ours. Over to you - and please give generously.

Float-model: A beautiful woman used to attract investors to your listing on the stock market. Pioneered, and possibly perfected, by Myer with Jennifer Hawkins during its $2.4bn float. Investors, some no doubt encouraged to open their wallets by the presence of the former Miss Universe, are still waiting for the shares to reach their issue price.

Continue reading "Call for entries: updating the Punch business dictionary" »

On a rainy Autumn afternoon in April 2006, while sitting in the front room of my home, I launched Digital Photography School - a blog about photography to record and share the lessons I was learning in photography.

The first post was on shooting action shots in low light conditions - it wasn’t that great and I’m not sure that anyone ever read it - but it was a start.

Today, 3 and a half years later, that blog is read by over 3 million readers a month and is quickly paying my mortgage - in fact in November it generated more than $100,000, most of that in a week after launching a Portrait Photography Tips E-book.

Continue reading "Seven rules of blogging from a legend of the craft" »

At first blush today’s employment figures are an early Christmas present for the federal government. Some 30,000 jobs were created in November and the unemployment rate, against expectations, crept downwards by the tiniest of notches.

But there won’t be any champagne popping in the Cabinet room. There’s a worrying trend beneath the figures: the mining states, which you’d assume are leading Australia’s unexpected economic performance, are actually shedding jobs. It’s the states in the southeast - previously the laggards - where the jobs are being created.

So [the run-up] to Christmas Eve will be a nervous one for Kevin Rudd. Santa could be preparing a big sack of trouble to chuck down his chimney in the form of the national accounts which come out on December 24 16 and should give a clearer indication of any weak spots in the economy.

Continue reading "The one Christmas present Kevin Rudd doesn’t need" »

This is a sad week for Australia.

For more than 30 years the not-for-profit organisation Young Achievement Australia brought business skills to some 190,000 students. It was a beacon of inspiration, a source of knowledge, and a cultivator of leadership for thousands of young Aussies.

This week YAA will shut down, because its funding has dried up. It is a tragedy for all of those who have experienced its excellence, and for all of those who never will.

Continue reading "Light flickering out for a beacon of our prosperity" »

The journey started a few years back when a tomato and pumpkin self seeded in the mulch in our backyard.

And it’s culminated now with me doing my best to avoid the supermarket for fruit, vegetables and meat by producing my own.

And in between - while I profess no inside knowledge about trends in food shopping - I have concluded that when blokes like me start talking about self sufficiency, the retail supermarket giants have to lift their game.

Continue reading "My goats say a lot about supermarkets" »

Gold Coast United owner Clive Palmer has decided to save his club $100,000 every home game by capping the crowds at Skilled Park at 5000.

For mining billionaire Palmer, this makes perfect business sense. For anyone interested in furthering the football cause in Australia, it doesn’t even reach common sense.

Personally, I have two reactions to this story: first is the emotional fan who says this is an outrageous move that disregards the whole point of what Football Federation Australia were trying to achieve when they granted Palmer’s bid an A-League licence.

Continue reading "Gold Coast crowd cap means bad business for everyone" »

It is a running joke in my office that we should just pack up and relocate to Norway.

Norway has an enviable track record when it comes to gender equality initiatives.

And looking specifically at the issue of women in corporate leadership, Norway’s experience with the introduction of quotas for corporate boards has shown that such measures can radically alter gender equality outcomes for the better.

Continue reading "Why gender quotas would help Australian business" »

It’s a little-known fact, but not long ago the Commonwealth Government hired some corporate management consultants to update our national anthem. The first verse became:

Australians all let us rejoice: National stakeholders going forward should be committed to visionary communications

For we are young and free: For we incubate next-generation scenarios that leverage dynamic functionalities

With golden soil and wealth for toil: With mission critical infrastructure to maximise world-class deliverables

Our home is girt by sea: Our brickware harnesses frictionless supply chain scenarios.

Continue reading "Global Frankness Crisis contributed to the GFC" »

Last week I was fortunate to be invited to be part of the launch of a new business on Kangaroo Island, which is in my electorate.

Kangaroo Island is one of the most beautiful parts of Australia, it is frontier country. 

But the very thing that makes it so beautiful for the hundreds of thousands of tourists is the same thing that makes it so challenging for its residents and its economy.

Continue reading "Entrepreneurial spirit beats government every time" »

Nowhere is the disconnect between the business fraternity and the wider community greater than on the issue of executive salaries.

Forget trying to explain a $10m-plus pay packet with references to “international benchmarks” and “long-term incentives”. The public simply doesn’t accept that anyone, no matter how brilliant, is worth $190,000 a week - or 150 times the average salary.

Given this depth of anger among voters towards the occasionally obscene salaries received by our corporate leaders, the Rudd government has shown remarkable restraint on the issue.

Continue reading "On the pay divide, opinion counts as much as coin" »

“It is the government’s clear desire for Telstra to structurally separate, on a voluntary and cooperative basis.” - Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

Let’s cut to the chase. There is nothing “cooperative” about what the government wants to do to Telstra. This morning’s announcement from Stephen Conroy, fulfilling his veiled threats to the giant company pretty much since winning government, is the end of Telstra as we know it. The 600-pound gorilla of the telecommunications industry will never be the same again.

The government’s new laws, flagged late last year when it spectacularly locked Telstra out of the national broadband network project, are designed to break up the company and prevent it from undermining the NBN. In short, Telstra can’t continue to be the dominant force in all corners of the market.

Continue reading "Cooperation with Telstra? Give us a break" »

For those of us concerned about competition and consumer law issues there comes a time when the case for action is so overwhelming that we need to the ACCC to stop “watching” and to act decisively in the consumer interest.

In the petrol industry that time has come.

On this occasion it’s the urgent need for the ACCC to block Caltex’s proposed acquisition of Mobil service stations.

Continue reading "Copping a servo: stop Caltex buying Mobil’s stations" »

There is nothing like an Equal Pay Day to make a man see red.

Writing on Tuesday about research that claims women earn 17.5 per cent less than men in Australia, I drew the wrath of blokes from around the country.

That figure came from the Australian Bureau of Statistics but was used by the newly formed Equal Pay Alliance of 135 organisations to make their point.

Continue reading "Men can’t keep it level when it comes to equal pay" »

In the run up to Father’s Day the electrical stores are spruiking like it’s Christmas. You can be sure that along with any of the hot deals from digital cameras to TVs will come one innocent –sounding question.

At the very point of sale when you’re about to hand over the cash for dad’s gift you’ll be asked “Would you like an extended warranty with that?”

It sounds simple enough. An few extra years’ “protection” for a hundred bucks or so, depending on the price of the item.

Continue reading "Are we being served? The rort of extended warranties" »

Of all the silly moments in his career, Sylvester Stallone’s turn in Demolition Man as a good-cop-turned-bad who is incarcerated, cryogenically frozen and then thawed out to fight his nemesis, serial killer Wesley Snipes, must rank as the high point of Sly’s cinematic stupidity.

There is however one accidentally prescient moment in the movie - in the futuristic dystopia of Los Angeles, a war within capitalism has left Taco Bell as the last corporation standing.

Substitute the word Woolworths for Taco Bell and you could film Demolition Man II in Australia. On current projections, by 2015 Woolies will have bought the NRL and AFL, the excellent Lebanese food chain Brothers Kebabs and the popular rock bands Powderfinger and The Veronicas.

Continue reading "Our dirty secret: we actually love massive supermarkets" »

IT seems incredible but barely two years into the greatest depression/recession/downturn/hiccup (take your pick) the world has suffered since the 1930s, we’re already talking about bubbles again.

Experts fear the 30 per cent surge in the local stock market since March – mirroring a similar spike on Wall Street – is building into a premature and unsustainable bubble crying out to be pricked.

Reserve Bank boss Glenn Stevens reckons the housing market, fuelled by record low interest rates and the government’s first-home owners giveaway, is looking dangerously like a bubble that could need a dose of higher interest rates to deflate.

Continue reading "Human nature is to be forever blowing bubbles" »

CHINA is a huge country. Its landmass is 25 per cent bigger than Australia, its economy is 10 times larger, it has 60 times as many people and, I am led to be believe, significantly more BBQ duck restaurants.

Thankfully, Australia is still ahead in a few areas. We have more stars on our flag, we have won more cricket World Cups and, as developments in the past few weeks prove, we trounce the Chinese in corporate haggling.

Increasingly, Australian business is going to rub up against China. The People’s Republic is our No2 trading partner but is likely to regain the No1 slot from Japan this year or next. And Beijing’s “go global’’ directive, or zou chu qu, means China’s state-owned firms will continue to eye opportunities to join with, or buy outright, Australian companies.

Continue reading "China will have learned from failed mega-deal" »

WHO’D be a business owner in Australia?

With the way the Federal Government up-ends the apple cart every few months you’d have to have a thick skin, and a thick wallet, to want to have a crack at increasing the nation’s prosperity.

One of my mates runs a solar energy company - an occupation unrivalled in its capacity to guarantee you endless sleepless nights, wondering when the Federal Government will deliver its next windfall, followed by a swift kick in the guts.

Continue reading "Why Australian business needs to think on its feet" »

LEWIE Ranieri was one of the stars of Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis’s fantastic expose of excess on Wall Street and in London in the 1980s.

At his best, the Salomon Bros trader, who pioneered the kind of mortgage-backed bonds that brought the financial system to its knees last year, was taking home somewhere between $US2m and $US5m a year. He famously owned more powerboats (five) than suits (four). He was, in the vernacular of the times, a big swinging dick. A master of the universe. A Gordon Gekko before Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas brought the fabulous rogue to life.

You didn’t get much more colourful or successful than Ranieri (who, incidentally, is still mooching around Wall Street as a fund manager). But, for anyone with more than a passing interest in matters financial, his salary, so celebrated at the time, now looks absurdly small. Telstra’s David Thodey, who’s running a regulated utility at the bottom of the planet and drives a Toyota Corolla, will earn more most years.

Continue reading "How did we end up with all these zeroes?" »

LIKE darning socks, car-pooling and drinking instant coffee, bank bashing went out of favour when we were all getting rich during “the great neo-liberal experiment”. Now, from the top office in the land down, this wholesome pursuit is making a comeback.

It’s not that the banks ever lost their talent for bastardry. It’s just that for a decade or so it has been suppressed by competition – from the likes of Aussie and Wizard – and by the buoyant economy. That $140 annual account-keeping fee didn’t look so bad when your credit card was in the black and the value of your house had doubled in the past two years. But with competition to the Big Four now all but wiped out, leaving the Westpac, Commonwealth, NAB and ANZ as the last saviours of our financial system (just ask them), the bastards inside can once again be unleashed. 

The Commonwealth took one for the team this week when it raised variable home loan rates 0.1 percentage points to 5.74 per cent. It was the first mortgage rate increase by the banks since last year but won’t, unfortunately, be the last.

Continue reading "Bastard banks making a comeback after the boom" »

Having just moved back to Melbourne on a characteristically wet and cold June weekend I thought the fact the streets were empty had something to do with the Queen’s birthday and the weather.

Not so. I had arrived in a city on the brink of collapse; a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which the survivors were obviously hauled up in bunkers somewhere. I was in mortal danger of being eaten by the now cannibalistic mobs roaming the streets. 

When I arrived in my apartment the heat worked, as did the television but the bad news came during the broadcast that had somehow gone to air. 

The news said that following the bushfires, the bashings of Indian students and now the rampant outbreak of swine flu in the state, the world could soon be under the impression that Victoria is too dangerous a place to do business.

Continue reading "Vicpocalypse is here but Melbourne the most livable" »

We always knew Sol Trujillo was a smooth talker. Now we know just how smooth. His replacement at Telstra, David Thodey, will be paid at least $1m, and possibly as much as $4m, less a year.

Details of Thodey’s contract, released to the ASX this morning, actually say more about Trujillo than his successor. Trujillo may not have been able to bend the government to his will but he could sure strike a good deal with a pliant Telstra board.

Thodey, who colleagues say is a good negotiator, will be paid $2m a year. Trujillo got $3m. Thodey could top up his pay with another $7.2m in bonuses if he hits certain targets. Trujillo’s bonuses could run to $10m. If Thodey, and Telstra, hit every target in the coming year, he could earn up to $9.2m. Trujillo took home $13.4m last financial year.

Continue reading "Deal for new Telstra boss shows how good Sol was" »