TRANSCRIPT
Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Billson interview with Leon Delaney.
2CC Canberra
Subject: ASBFEO hits 50,000 Milestone of helping Small Businesses
Leon Delaney
The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman has been in existence since March 2016 and at the end of last year, the end of 2024, the office has hit a milestone of having provided assistance of some sort to 50,000 small and family businesses over that period of time.
The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, and former Minister for Small Business Bruce Billson, good afternoon.
Bruce Billson
Leon, fab to be with you and your listeners today.
Leon Delaney
Well thanks for joining us today, that is a significant milestone, isn't it!
50,000 businesses having received the assistance of the Ombudsman's office. Of course, the job is never finished, is it?
Bruce Billson
No it’s an ongoing challenge and right now, many small businesses are saying the headwinds making life tough for them are overwhelming them, more so than wind in their sales, making life easier. We get that, we understand that that's why more is being asked of us and we're ready to provide that support in these challenging times
Leon Delaney
You've suggested that not enough small businesses actually know you exist, you need to thump the table a bit more loudly, Bruce.
Bruce Billson
Well, we do what we can I mean, I get some very high-profile media invitations. You might have heard of some cat called Leon Delaney whose been doing burn outs during “Summernats”, but he also runs the great afternoon radio programme, and frankly, one of the reasons why I make sure I'm so available to catch up with you Leon, and others is to try and get the word out there.
We run a very lean organisation. We don't have big promotions budgets and frankly, small and family business owners are so stretched and time poor I'm sure they don't wake up in the morning, looking for the world's greatest acronym being ASBFEO and know quite what we're about.
So what we try to do, is tell stories, we're trying to share examples about how we've helped other businesses and the kinds of support and guidance and assistance that we offer in the hopes, if people do strike a challenging time or they have a grievance that’s holding back their business, they know we are an ally they can count on, they can turn to us for some help.
Leon Delaney
One of the key points of assistance that your office can sometimes assist with is where businesses find themselves in dispute, either with another business or heaven forbid, with a government agency. And they really are not in a position to contemplate, taking legal action and ending up in court. It's just too much for them to contemplate, and if they did take on that expense, it could well wipe them out. This is an important part of your job, isn't it?
Bruce Billson
Absolutely and it's one of the motivations about why the organisation was created in the first place. A dispute with another business in the Commonwealth jurisdiction may need to go to the Federal Court of Australia. Now Leon that’s a quarter of a million dollars in cost and there may be two years before you get your time in court and then you have the risk of paying the cost of the other party.
If you happen to lose that cost order “gorilla” just adds to the terror and that's no place for a small or family business wanting a quick and timely resolution of a matter so they can get back to business. And one of the things we focus on Leon, is we don't want a victor and the vanquished. In many cases, these small and family businesses hope to keep dealing with the other party that they've had a little bit of a hiccup with.
So there's no point having an approach to keep someone dominating the outcome and be delighted while the other party, then they become aggrieved when there's a need to maintain a business relationship. So our aim is to get the matter resolved with a respectable outcome for all parties, hopefully keep the relationships intact and get the business back in business.
Leon Delaney
Which of course is the aim of the game, keeping business in business. But of course, you do go beyond dispute resolution, there's a lot of other supports that you can offer to small business and family businesses, in a range of different fields including advice on better business management practices, all way through to improved cybersecurity, which of course, is one of the big challenges facing any business these days, isn’t it?
Bruce Billson
It is and that also is another example about how many touchpoints there are within the levels of government and also the private sector that might be of use to a small or family business.
So as I mentioned at the outset, often time poor, often doing the sort of admin stuff, working on the business late at night, after they have tried to delight customers during the day. Some of that help can be really hard to find.
We offer a bit of navigational assistance. Our legislation says don't duplicate anything that's being done elsewhere and that's what we aim to honour. Don't duplicate, but help connect people and we describe ourselves as a bit of a concierge service, like a good concierge at a good hotel. They can solve many problems themselves, but if it's not them, they'll know who is best placed to get the outcome that they're looking for.
That's where we try to bring to life, this rich array of resources and guidance material and assistance that happens to be out there somewhere, to coin a phrase, and we try to actually guide small and family businesses to where it is when they need it. Not just have it sort of out there and talked about, with owners trying to remember when they are having an issue.
Its not some huge theoretical concept, not a tome of a documentation that it's a like a senate inquiry, they want actionable information right now and often our job is trying to distil complex stuff into frankly, what might be a fridge magnet Leon, just to get people in the right mode to get things happening.
Leon Delaney
Fridge magnets are useful for pinning up this week's shopping list, but people don't actually read the magnet itself, do they?
Bruce Billson
Well we hope so, we’ve got a few of those – one with cyber security tips for small business, may I say that is a particularly funky fridge magnet. There is also one around preparing in the event that a disaster strikes whether it’s a natural disaster or even a disaster with the business owner having a health episode, which also leads me to another one we've got, that talks about mental health tips and emotional wellbeing for small and family business owners. That's the sort of stuff that we do, we try and take complicated, often very dense material and turn it into things a time-poor person can pick up a go ‘yep I can do that’ and I am going to do it. And that's where we try and provide that support.
Leon Delaney
In the small business world, often the hardest working employee in the business is the proprietor.
Bruce Billson
And the last to be paid, I know that the businesses that I've run with Mrs Billson, over many years, we were the last to be paid, and when you couldn't fill a shift, guess who filled that slot.
Now that's one of the many reasons why I honour and celebrate enterprising men and women, those small and family businesses are providing such a significant contribution to the economy.
We've talked before about the 2 in 5 private sector jobs, and we’ve called out the fact that, that 2 in 5 used to be 2 in 4. And that's another part of our work - really revealing important data that tells the story about what's going on in the small and family business economy, and then equipping decision makers, not only with that data, but you know me Leon, we lean in and give them some ideas about what they should be doing about it as well. That’s part of our advocacy function, that’s part of what we do to release data, that's part of our role in being a really strong and dependable voice for small and family businesses.
Leon Delaney
And anybody who's running a small or family enterprise at the present point in time and they feel they might need some assistance from the Ombudsman, Bruce, how do they find you?
Bruce Billson
Best way in, is through a gripping, well worth reading website – www.asbfeo.gov.au
That's a great place to start, whether you've got a dispute you're not sure how to progress, or you're looking for some resources.
That's a great place to start, and we can actively point you in the right direction, if it's not us, where the best avenue for support could be for your particular challenge and needs.
Leon Delaney
Indeed Bruce, thanks very much for chatting today.
Bruce Billson
Great to be with you, take care Leon.
Leon Delaney
Thank you, Bruce Billson, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.