Small Biz Matters meets Brendan Clarke, the Science Party Candidate for Berowra

Small Biz Matters – a half hour program each week where you can work ON your business rather than IN it.
Small Business Bookkeeping Tips
with Alexi Boyd from Boyd Office Management Services
Date: 21 June 2016

Here at Small Biz Matters we believe that your vote really counts! As the voice of small business in Hornsby and KuringGai we want our listeners to be informed about their voting choice. 

Join us over three exciting weeks where we interview in depth three of the candidates for the Federal seat of Berowra.

Will be covering a range of issues that are important to small businesses: Check out the questions below that we posed to all of the candidates and compare each of their answers via our podcasts page

NBN:

A big concern among the small businesses, particularly in the media all in the online space is where broadband is heading and the attitudes of the major parties in making this a political football instead of real policy solutions. It seems to be only catering for the broadband capacity we are only using now and absolutely not equipped for any future demand that will inevitably come.

We’ve all seen how the internet has slowed as Netflix and other streaming services come online and yet the speeds talked about in the NBN take us are barely covering one year into the future. The local small business we spoke to is still couriering around data on drives… This issue which affect every single online business – which is all of us.

Don’t give us an answer about streaming movies; this question is about small business and making Australian competitive into the future. What is your exact policy for the next 5 years?

TAFE Question:

TAFE Hornsby has been an important institution since 1967, providing hundred of jobs over this period and excellent, world recognised education for our community. TAFE courses are recognised in all industries, particularly in the trades as the benchmark and yet with these funding cuts and loss of thousands of positions state-wide plus the sudden need for them to become competitive against now-federally funded institutions it is near impossible for these courses to delivered at this same high standard. This has affected small business with a dumbing down of courses and apprentices not having the same standard of qualifications. This is a question for Julian Leeser: Since the Federal government injected millions to private colleges (with a high dropout rate, not to mention the downright fraudulent operators) in a scheme which has since been frozen what is your response to the above and for the need to keep Hornsby TAFE functioning at the previous level expected by the local community and local businesses?

Want to learn more about TAFE or see what courses they have to offer? Go to https://www.tafensw.edu.au/ for more information.

Climate Change Question:

The uptake of solar renewable energy in the Hornsby area is one of the highest in Australia and the emergence of battery technology could lead us towards homes and businesses moving off the grid, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, our impact environment and state owned assets. And yet the federal incentives for businesses or individuals are being scaled back. Question for all candidates: What would your party do to incentivise businesses and individuals to implement renewable energy at the consumer level, and how will you fund such a scheme?