With small business resources increasingly challenged by compliance demands, COSBOA has announced the creation of an annual award for the worst red tape as identified by small business people and others. 

The winner of the inaugural award, named ‘The Gobbledygook Cup’, will be announced in December.

Peter Strong, CEO of COSBOA, said the award recognised “the silly, time sapping, morale destroying compliance demands that have been placed on small business people” that COSBOA and its members have highlighted for years.

“It’s about time we named and shamed the organisations that have developed the worst red tape,” said Mr Strong. “Indeed, we should not just name and shame but we should give an award so that they will always be able to remember the time they got things really wrong.”

Four early nominations can already be found on COSBOA’s website, including the Department of Human Services who have an Employer Toolkit that supposedly helps businesses manage the government’s Paid Parental Leave process. “The toolkit includes four pages of HTML and XML code that a small business can use in their accounting software. That’s right – a government agency is demanding that a small business person break the law and hack into a proprietary software and change the code. This is bizarre and plainly stupid,” said Mr Strong.

Mr Strong further added, “There are also two of our shadow regulators, APRA AMCOS and the PPCA, who have combined to form a new shadow regulator called OneMusic Australia. Through this they are trying to force businesses to pay them a licence fee if an employee listens to music through headphones they are wearing in the workplace as if that is a public performance. They also want business to pay them extra money if music from the business’ premises is audible in the business’ carpark. Most of the money collected then goes to huge American music conglomerates.”

The States and Territories have also been jointly nominated for their management of workers’ compensation and, separately, for their management of payroll tax. “Confusion breeds mistakes and when we are discussing business essentials such as workers’ compensation it should be easy, not hard,” said Mr Strong. “Taxing businesses if they employ too many people is also an odd thing.”

COSBOA is hoping to receive more nominations (anonymously, if need be) from business people, public servants, corporate riders, and the public. Nominate here.

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