Opinion: Peter Strong reviews the small business year, calls for return of Julia Gillard

How did small business people fare in 2023? From a policy and government point of view?

The first obvious change from previous years is that many politicians, regulators and policymakers seem to have forgotten that a small business is often simply one person, or maybe two people. Who quite often employ other people. And have families.

This has been forgotten by the Prime Minister and his government. It has also been ignored by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), and continued to be ignored by Safe Work Australia (SWA). Now it looks like the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) and the Fair Work Commission (FWC) have been given green light to treat small business people as less than human – certainly with less rights than other humans in the workplace.

This is all very different from when another Labor Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was in charge. Ms Gillard engaged in a real way with the small business community. There was regard for us as people. 

The appointment under her watch of the federal Small Business Commissioner, which eventually became the ASBFEO, is a great example. In her time the AHRC commissioners also developed a much better understanding of the small business sector and its people. That was similar to the Fair Work Ombudsman, which instigated a dedicated small business helpline and training for its staff about the needs of the small business employer and the best means of communications. The small business community worked with the FWO to make sure the dodgy employers were targeted, and the good ones were left alone. It worked. But the new FWO has made the statement that they are there for workers not employers – the new Ombudsman has no idea about the small workplace. 

Ms Gillard also made workplace relations easier by drastically cutting down the number of awards. This government is making workplace relations even more complex. The Australian workplace relations system has already been recognised as the most complex in the world. The recent splitting of the so-called ‘Closing Loopholes Bill’ into two pieces of legislation doesn’t help. It is 800 pages of confusion and legislative gaslighting of small businesses and their supporters.

There was real support and understanding under Gillard, and it is hard to imagine the Albanese government doing the same. Mr Albanese very rarely engaged with small business advocates in opposition or in previous ministerial roles, so it’s unsurprising that the PM has no focus on our sector – except for some throwaway words every now and then. 

As a matter of fact the Albanese government has already taken funds from the ASBFEO and, given their lack of care or concern for small business, this could just continue to happen.

Which brings us to Victoria. Here we see the Labor government intends to gut the Small Business Commissioner office and cut staff numbers from 22 to just eight people. 

An odd thing to do is remove essential support for those who employ others and pay taxes – especially given the broken state of that state’s budget.

This is concerning even more when we saw, at the beginning of the year, the federal Treasury release a report that shows a mental health crisis in the world of the self-employed, where at least one in five self-employed people have a medically diagnosed mental health disorder. 

That number increases to more than one in three when sectors such as retail, manufacturing and accommodation are considered. Not OK. 

But no one from the government or from key agencies has enough gumption and care to remove the major causes of these problems which is stress and increasing complexity in workplace relations – that makes compliance with employment laws unachievable. 

We also see the reintroduction of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT) legislation. Last time they tried to do this it was defeated once the Senate cross-bench saw that it was a destructive policy for owner-drivers and would make the transport sector less flexible and less efficient. That first version of the RSRT would have had the right to set fees for owner drivers, while big transport companies could set their own fees. This would have forced owner-drivers off the road. Once the banks got wind of this they started to refuse loans for truck drivers and some went bankrupt. The previous RSRT also proposed that owner drivers had to charge customers for a full load even if the load was much smaller. The theory was that it would stop drivers speeding but no one explained how. It was obvious that the previous version of the RSRT was designed to give the biggest transport businesses and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) control of that industry in Australia.

The current version of the RSRT is much the same and is not great news for owner-drivers or their families. It certainly isn’t good news for the consumer.

The health of the self-employed is not important to the government or its agencies. Not a great year to be self-employed and it won’t get better next year as the government tries to, vicariously, stop small business employers from being able to trade by creating extra, more confusing demands.

Now the good stuff. 

Unfair contract terms legislation was passed and now there are penalties for businesses that impose unfair contract terms on small business people. And the threshold for measuring when a business is a small business has also increased substantially.  That is excellent. There is much work being done around late payments to small businesses from big businesses. That is also excellent.

There are some funds for cyber-security support and some other things.

But none of it makes up for the lack of understanding and care about the health of over 2m Australians.

If you are an owner driver and you no longer have contracted work, then changes to late payments and contract law is completely meaningless.

Next year promises more complexity through the RSRT and workplace relations. Not good. Not OK. Bring back Julia Gillard.

Peter Strong is the former chief executive of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia.