Originally published in The Canberra Times

By Bruce Billson

As we return to business as usual after the election, I am hopeful that the incoming government will have a very strong and prominent focus on small and family businesses. It is urgent and necessary.

This post-COVID era has been particularly challenging for smaller enterprises. Most recently, increased input costs, profit margin squeeze and customer caution and restraint have profoundly impacted viability. Increased complexity of compliance and regulation, and in a number of cases, the threat of much stiffer consequences for missteps, have significantly impacted the "business of running a business" for small business owners. The risk-reward balance has tilted more toward things of concern, away from the joys and benefits of business ownership.

This challenging post-COVID operating environment isn't what is needed to turn around the decreasing small business share of the national economy and private-sector employment over the last nearly two decades.

The re-elected government has made a number of useful small business commitments, including extending the instant asset write-off for small businesses for another year to enable the deduction of the full cost of eligible assets costing less than $20,000 that are first used or installed ready for use by June 30, 2026.

While this is a very positive step, small businesses will need more certainty and durability in this measure to support increased productivity across the sector.

It is also encouraging that eligible small and family businesses will stand to benefit from the additional modest energy bill relief and targeted tax cuts for sole traders, contractors and many unincorporated business owners.

I am particularly pleased by commitments to introduce unfair trading practices protections to small businesses (as we have long advocated), extending unfair contract terms protections to all franchising contracts and strengthening the enforcement of the Franchising Code of Conduct and other fair-trading safeguards.

Broad consultation with small businesses will be important to ensure that the proposed banning of non-compete clauses does not result in business value, IP and client lists walking out the door with a former employee.

The post-election discussion about a renewed effort to boost productivity will be welcome by small businesses as productivity improvement occurs in the workplace, and the vast majority of these are small employers.

While there has been some commentary about the increased growth of small businesses over recent months, the National Small Business Strategy reports that the number of small businesses grew at an average annual rate of 3.4 per cent over the three years between 2020-21 to 2023-24.

Over this period, the health care and social assistance and transport, postal and warehousing industries had the highest annual growth rates with the number of small businesses growing on average 7.5 per cent and 6.7 per cent, respectively.

The strongest annual average growth in the health care and social assistance industry occurred in the other social assistance services industry group, which includes disability assistance services. And while the number of small businesses in this group grew 38 per cent on average over the last three financial years (2020-21 to 2023-24), it is important to recognise that 64 per cent of small businesses in the other social assistance services industry were non-employing in 2023-24.

This is a trend also being seen in the courier pick-up and delivery services industry such as Uber drivers, where the number of small businesses grew at 25 per cent on average over the three years from 2020-21 to 2023-24, with 89 per cent of the small businesses in this industry non-employing in 2023-24.

I applaud these small business owners who have entered the market in tough times with passion and enthusiasm to make a positive and rewarding contribution to their communities and the nation.

But I am concerned that while we have seen modest business growth in two industries, these are less likely to be the kind of small businesses able to create more growth by employing staff. Only 3 per cent of surviving non-employing businesses became an employing business in 2023-24, the lowest rate since this ABS data series started in July 2007.

Just like we need to be vigilant about highlighting unintended consequences of policies, we need to bring greater focus to less apparent aspects of an evolving small business community and economy.

At every level of government, we need to understand the nuances of small business, which includes changing gender profiles of small business ownership, issues for regional business owners and the challenges for culturally and linguistically diverse small and family business owners.

Female-led businesses are growing significantly as a proportion of business ownership, and yet, still, women in business are underestimated and undervalued, and we know this from our on-the-ground discussions with small business owners.

Over half of the small business owners in the transport, postal and warehousing industries who were assisted by an ASBFEO case manager in the March quarter of 2025 spoke a language other than English at home, compared to 24 per cent across all industries.

A total of 22 per cent of the small business owners in the health care and social assistance industries assisted by an ASBFEO case manager in the March quarter of 2025 were in regional Australia (compared to 18 per cent across all industries).

These numbers are important because if we can't see people, all enterprising people, then we can't make or evaluate policy or programs for them. We can't design programs for them, and we can't give them the voice they deserve in the discussions and consultations about policies.

We don't hear about these issues enough, and we're not seeing the true picture of their valuable contributions. And we need to do better.

To have a strong and resilient economy, we need small businesses and their owners to thrive. They make a vital contribution to their local economy and to the national economy, and we need to keep micro, small and family businesses fairly and squarely in the sights of policy makers and regulators.

We need to keep putting wind in the sails of our enterprising women and men through positive policy action to provide the best possible operating environment to support the best prospects for success.