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On Tuesday we noted how, on Monday morning, the Senate saved the Unfair Contracts Bill from the Abbott government's neutering of it. Of course, on Monday night Tony Abbott was deposed and now Malcolm Turnbull is Prime Minister.

ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips provided a fuller rundown of events in the Senate in Business Spectator. The article is here. More...

What an extraordinary day yesterday. Yes, Tony Abbott has gone as Prime Minister.

But what you probably don’t know is how, in the morning, the Senate rescued small business people. The Senate amended the Unfair Contracts Bill by lifting the $100,000 contract limit where the protections were to stop, to $300,000. This means that huge numbers of additional small business people should now have access to the unfair contract protections. We thank the Senate and Senators. More...

The Abbott government has dug itself into another self-damaging hole. This time it’s over the sly con they are conducting against Australia’s small business people by sliding up to big business interests. We exposed this several weeks ago.

But now the underpayment of 7-Eleven employees is being blamed on unfair franchisor contracts. And it’s been the franchisors who’ve been blocking the unfair contract laws. The Abbott government’s deal with the franchisors to con and screw over small business people is backfiring in a spectacular way. More...

Politics works like this. You make big election promises. Then, once in government, appear to deliver the promises. But in the detail kill off the promise. The suckers in the electorate won’t notice!

That’s the situation with the Coalition’s key promise to small business people to extend consumer unfair contract protections to them. We expressed our shock last week.

Grace Collier in The Weekend Australian explained “This bill was supposed to extend some basic rules about commercial contracts (for small businesses) … the government put an exemption in, which pretty much exempts everyone and makes the bill meaningless.” More...