Former Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Kate Carnell.
Former Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Kate Carnell has joined the board of Mable, an Aussie startup connecting small business aged care and disability service providers with the users who need them.
Headed up by co-founder and chief Peter Scutt, Mable is intended to offer service users a range of alternatives to the big players, while also providing more flexibility for the SMEs, fostering more personal connections.
It’s also designed to be more cost effective and free from the bureaucracy associated with this sector.
For Carnell, who came to the end of her five-year tenure as small business ombudsman in March, this new board role plays into her passions.
B.A., Tufts University
Nathan leads U.S. PIRG’s Right to Repair campaign, working to pass legislation that will prevent companies from blocking consumers’ ability to fix their own electronics. In 2009, while working with the network’s Digital Team, he mobilized so many people to deliver online comments to then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in opposition to cuts to the state parks budget that they crashed the governor’s email servers. Nathan lives in Arlington, Mass., with his wife and two children.
Right to Repair campaigns aren’t only making progress in more than two dozen states, they’re also underway across the world. The European Union has already enacted reforms to make it easier to fix appliances and Australia is ramping up efforts to allow independent repair people and people like you and me to fix things ourselves instead of having to get help from the companies that made our broken products.
March 5, 2021
The Federal Court has found Australia-wide courier delivery franchisor Megasave Couriers misled franchisees with false guarantees of weekly payments and annual income.
In proceedings brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Federal Court declared Megasave Couriers Australia breached consumer law by making false or misleading representations to incoming franchisees.
Megasave admitted, from September 2019 to July 2020, it promised potential franchisees guaranteed minimum weekly payments of about $2,000 and an annual income of $91,000.
However, the company was not paying its existing franchisees the promoted weekly payments, and it did not have the revenue to pay franchisees in line with its claims.