Firms fed-up being unpaid govt pay-clerks

The Australian Industry Group group's Innes Willox (R) is seeking less haste to balance the budget. Source: AAP

BUSINESS groups have hit out at the opposition for blocking the removal of $44 million in red-tape associated with the current paid parental leave scheme.

The government wants to relieve all businesses of the burden of having to administer the scheme. But Labor has rejected the plan, instead wanting to limit it to firms that employ less than 20 people.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief operating officer John Osborn said on Thursday the scheme should be directly funded and administered by government.

"Small business people should not be forced to be the unpaid pay-clerks for government schemes," Mr Osborn said in a statement.

NSW Business Chamber chief executive Stephen Cartwright agreed, saying the federal government has plenty of public servants to manage the operation.

"Small business does not," he said.

He said when the scheme was introduced by the previous Labor government it was administered by the Family Assistance Office before being added to the existing administrative burden of business.

Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman said Labor should stop playing politics and provide the support retailers need to get on with the job of doing business.

Debt recovery firm Prushka chief executive Roger Mendelson said cash flow is one of the main causes of financial difficulty and stress for small and medium size enterprises.

However, business groups are equally unhappy with Prime Minister Tony Abbott's more generous $5.5 billion paid parental leave scheme that will be partly funded by a 1.5 per cent levy on the country's 3000 biggest companies.

Meanwhile, the Australian Industry Group has presented the government with a 10-point plan to rebalance the economy to replace the waning mining investment boom with new drivers of growth.

The group's chief executive Innes Willox is also concerned that in the haste to get the budget back in order, the government will cut measures and programs that support innovation and skills development at a time when extra effort is needed.

"We shouldn't rush back to surplus. To go too hard, too fast will only do damage," he told Sky News, but added that there does need to be some structural reform.

He warns that manufacturing in particular has been "squeezed and sapped" by high costs, the high Australian dollar and low productivity.

The 10-point plan seeks to overcome barriers to growth across all industries.

It includes both the federal and state governments getting their budgets back on a secure footing but not until the end of the decade.

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