Clayton Mitchell: Protecting Small Business

MP Clayton Mitchell. Photo/Andrew Warner

I am particularly sensitive to the needs of small business owners, because I've been a small business owner from the age of eighteen. I am similarly, ever at the ready to defend their interest.

The current Health and Safety Reform Bill, as proposed by the Government, adds costly health and safety regulations that would only add to the burden of small and medium sized businesses.

So, I have challenged this current Government on the plethora of unintended consequences wrapped up in their current Health and Safety Reform Bill, and I have introduced eight different practical and common sense amendments to protect small and medium sized businesses.

These include allowing businesses to take insurance against any potential financial liability; and protecting the wellbeing and livelihood of spouses in the event of accidental death in a workplace where the owners are both the boss and the worker.

However, from misapplied health and safety reform to shocking TPPA agreements, the current Government does not seem interested in preserving the rights of Kiwi small business. But I am.

And while at the moment we, as a Party, may be standing alone in our fight to preserve the interest of small business, it is with great courage that we, at New Zealand First continue to defend what's best for New Zealanders. Courage, because recent positive policy changes in healthcare and immigration remind us that New Zealand governments have a long history of adopting New Zealand First policies. It is, after all, very difficult to ignore common sense policies that truly benefit Kiwis - although the current Government threatens to make ignorance an art...