Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, today announced that the Government’s new $75 million Climate Ready program is open for applications. Climate Ready will support Australian businesses developing new products, processes and services to tackle climate change by providing dollar-for-dollar support for research and development, proof-of-concept and early-stage commercialisation activities.

Applicants can apply for grants ranging from $50,000 to $5 million.A broad range of applications are expected in areas as diverse as water recycling, waste recovery, small scale renewable energy technologies, green building materials, and other products, processes or services to monitor emissions or reduce energy use.

For more information, click here to access the media release, or visit www.ausindustry.gov.au.

 The Government has released its proposal for a new plan to tackle climate change by reducing carbon pollution.  The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, scheduled to commence in 2010 will, for the first time, place a limit, or cap, on the amount of carbon pollution industry can emit.

The Scheme will require affected businesses and industry to buy a ‘pollution permit’ for each tonne of carbon they contribute to the atmosphere, giving them a strong incentive to reduce pollution.

Because the carbon pollution reduction scheme will concentrate on the biggest polluters, it will place obligations on around 1000 Australian companies in total, those that produce more than 25000 tonnes of carbon pollution each year.  

The Government claims it will use every cent raised by the sale of pollution permits to help Australian households and businesses adjust to the scheme and invest in clean energy options.

For the first three years of the scheme, it will cut fuel taxes on a cent for cent basis to offset the initial price impact on fuel associated with the scheme’s introduction.  At the end of the three year period the Government will review this adjustment mechanism. It will also offering a range of additional assistance measures, in particular for low and middle income households, to help with adjustment costs and improve household energy efficiency.

The green paper also outlines programs to assist businesses in the transition period. This assistance involves providing free permits to the most emissions-intensive trade exposed activities, some direct assistance to coal fired electricity generators, and the creation of two specific industry adjustment funds, the Climate Change Action Fund and the Electricity Sector Adjustment Scheme.

The paper, along with fact sheets, summaries, details of public information sessions, information about making a submission and related publications, can be downloaded from:

http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/greenpaper/report/index.html  

This August Victoria’s Small Business Festival will provide inspiration, ideas and information for you small business with more than 360 events registered as part of the festival. Learn more at business.vic.gov.au/energise or by calling 13 22 15.

Yesterday 100 women from all over Australia participated in the Australian Businesswomen’s Network’s webinar: Government Support and Programs for Small Business, presented by Susan McGrath. Women explored the various grants, subsidies, rebates and programs available from both state and federal governments. 

One participant said: “This is my first webinar. Fabulous information. I have found it most useful.”

Participants continue the conversation and access resources via a specially-designed online community.

Following our initial contact with his office earlier this year, the ABN met with the Hon Dr Craig Emerson MP (Minister for Small Business) and his Chief of Staff on 8 July, to discuss a range of public policy issues identified by our community.

We raised with the Minister the need for more government support for women in small business, particularly in terms of business education and training; and the profiling of entrepreneurship as a career option for young women; the superannuation gap between males and females at retirement age, our members concerns about extensive compliance and regulatory issues for small business, the impact of skills shortages on our members and avenues for ongoing representation to government of our members’ further concerns.

In turn, the Minister discussed a range of small-business friendly initiatives that the Government has either introduced or is progressing. These include a superannuation clearing house which will ease the burden on business owners with less than 20 employees of having to pay employee superannuation contributions to different funds, a Business Enterprise Centres network to support small and micro businesses across Australia, 27 separate regulatory and compliance issues that the Government is in the process of streamlining, the application of general skilled and employer nominated migration streams to assist in easing the skills shortage and plans to introduce a national high speed broadband network.

In terms of government support for small business generally, we also raised our concerns about the closure of the previous government’s flagship Commercial Ready commercialisation funding program; and the Building Entrepreneurship in Small Business Scheme. The Minister advised that the funding was being transferred to programs that related to climate change and green business initiatives in line with the government’s focus on environmentally friendly enterprises.

We also discussed with the Minister our unique representative focus and the need for the ABN’s ongoing involvement in public policy development related to Australia’s female entrepreneurs and small business owners. As a result, we have been invited to contribute both informally; and as invited participants in formal consultative mechanisms as they occur.