Originally published in The Canberra Times

By Bruce Billson

With election talk building and political announcements starting to roll out, there has not been a more important time for small businesses to be seen, heard and supported.

The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO) barometer of small business health, the Pulse, has flattened out at a worrying 25 per cent below longer-term trends, with a spark of hope coming from the recent RBA interest rate cut.

Hope is important for enterprising women and men, but their perpetual optimism is best honoured by genuine action that creates the most supportive business environment policymakers, and regulators can realistically deliver.

No one can guarantee that every small business will succeed. But we should work as hard small business owners do, to make sure our smaller enterprises have the best possible prospects for success. Courageous people who choose to make their own livelihoods and provide opportunities for so many others in our communities deserve a supportive ecosystem.

What is needed is a plan to tackle the many headwinds small and family businesses are currently facing and that put wind in their sails - to improve the prospects for success, to get the risk and reward balance right and to ensure that small business ownership and entrepreneurship is a really attractive option for people.

That's why we need to back hope with a plan of practical, positive and constructive action to "energise enterprise".

An example of really worthwhile and welcome action is last week's commitment by the Australian government to introduce protections for small and family businesses harmed by unfair business trading practices. This will reassure small and family businesses that they can invest, innovate, take risks, compete and create jobs and opportunities without being unfairly "done over" by a more powerful business because there is a gaping hole in the law.

This is genuinely exciting and positive news. We have strongly advocated for this measure for four years and it carries forward one of our 14 steps to energise enterprise by levelling the playing field.

A complementary measure to support the effectiveness of fair trading protections, also set out in our 14 steps to energise enterprise, is providing an affordable, effective and timely alternative for small businesses to defend their economic interests by creating a Federal Small Business and Codes List in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia. Working to secure commitments to this initiative is a strategic priority for me this year.

Small businesses can't wait for years and years for supportive action at this time of significant economic and cost of doing business challenges. We need to redouble our efforts to nurture and develop the small and family business economy and turn around some worrying trajectories.

A greater sense of urgency needs to be more widely shared.

For me, the foot is well and truly down on the accelerator with less than one year to go in my Ombudsman term as there is still much to do to ensure small and family businesses are powering forward on all cylinders.

It is the mission of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to provide help aspiring and established business owners and entrepreneurs to start, grow or transform a business. We work with our collaborators to ensure that no business fails because the owners didn't know about something that might have helped.

Our curated information available through our website (asbfeo.gov.au), highly acclaimed data portal, monthly newsletters, quarterly reports and social platforms, are all part of the help we provide. Our aim is to make sure that time-poor enterprising women and men can find their way through a snowstorm of information and resources, to get what is needed, when it is needed, to help make the many important decisions and attend to the big responsibilities of business ownership.

Helping to find mutually acceptable resolutions to disputes, keep important business relationships intact and get business back to business without the cost, delays and risks of having to go to court is a key part of our assistance function.

Over the next 12 months, we will roll out and refine an enhancement to ASBFEO's dispute resolution service by providing limited access to low-cost legal advice for eligible small businesses. This will better equip unrepresented small businesses to navigate a business dispute by knowing where they stand and how to get the best out of dispute resolution processes, like mediation. Mediation is a feature of industry codes, like that in place for franchising, that seek to guide conduct where significant power imbalances may exist.

For franchising, ASBFEO is being asked to extend its better practice guidance into a more comprehensive education approach. The aim is to help equip and inform prospective and current business parties to a franchise relationship about their duties and responsibilities to each other, regulatory obligations, how to set up and operate well, avoid and resolve disputes and what the business journey involves, all with eyes wide open.

The regulatory and compliance burden is ever-increasing and weighs more heavily on smaller businesses that are less well-equipped to know what is expected of them and how to efficiently fulfil these duties. A priority for the year ahead is to drive a renaissance in right-sized regulation for small businesses that restores the important disciplines of genuine impact assessment and risk-related requirements, utilising existing business systems and processes and adopting a proportionate and supportive posture for any non-compliance.

I hear too often from business owners that their entrepreneurship rarely generates "rivers of gold".

But the "why" and benefits of small business ownership are so much more than financial. That sense of purpose, the ability to derive a reasonable livelihood from a passion, being more in control of personal time and life choices, and the deep satisfaction from providing opportunities for others and contributing directly to their community are crucial motivators. That "joy" of business ownership and self-employment for many of the 2.5 million Australians driving them, is being dulled by growing and more complex regulatory burdens and the risks of missteps.

That's why an advocacy priority for the year ahead is seeking to improve incentives and recalibrate the risk-reward balance. This is vital that we "energise enterprise", improve the attractiveness of business ownership, particularly amongst young people, and arrest the steady decline over many years of the small business contribution to economic activity and private sector employment.

It is a big ask but an essential mission for the year ahead.