In last Thursday’s Crikey (Item 11), Mark Bahnisch questioned the number of independent contractors and the conventional wisdom that this group needs to be courted by the political parties.

Some clear analysis of figures might help. The Productivity Commission cites figures of round 10.1% of the workforce in 1998 and dropping to 8.2% in 2004. At Independent Contractors of Australia we claim 1.9 million independent contractors – about 20% of the workforce (28% of the private sector) in 2004. We base our figure on the same ABS data used by the Productivity Commission. The difference is that the Productivity Commission excludes self-employed people who employ others from their data, and the data collection has been modified since 1998.

We say the self-employed who employ others need to be included because the key issue from a policy perspective is who works under a commercial contract instead of an employment contract. This is the distinction that both industrial legislation, trade practices law and now the Independent Contractor Act use. There is a very good, balanced discussion of this in the Explanatory Memorandum to the Independent Contractors Act.

And the growth in independent contractors has flatlined since about 2000, whichever figures are used – probably reflecting the slowdown in growth of the IT sector and related new industries. Data collection inconsistency is also a factor reflected in the figures.

We agree with Bahnisch that the issue has to be kept in perspective. Courting this group politically is not simply a matter of writing policy that will attract 1.9 million voters. This group’s allegiances to political parties are as diverse as those of the total population.

They are probably, however, an important component of swinging voters. And it must be remembered that the PM counts employees in his aspirational workers as well. It’s not the legal work contract that people use that determines their attitudes to work/life/politics but much broader factors. However, people who use the commercial contract are clearly in a business environment and would tend not to hold employee attitudes of employer loyalty and desire for permanency.

Employment and the attitudes that accompany it remains the dominant work environment and will probably remain so. However it’s also true that there are now new attitudes that see employment and its associated expectations of bonding to the firm etc as irrelevant to people’s lives and expectations. The political parties have travelled a painful journey in recognising this and still the penny hasn’t dropped fully. But it’s important to see this as only part of the mix of our current society and not to think it’s the only factor. Balance is important.