Backed Over, Not Backed Up

The government says it’s backing small business. Here’s what it looks like from under the wheels.

By Mick Spencer

Last Saturday morning, I was down in my home town of Canberra to grab a coffee and buy a birthday card that doesn’t look like it was printed in 1983. Instead, I found myself in a ghost town. A line of “For Lease” signs now stretches where cafes and bookshops once buzzed. If tumbleweeds rolled past a boarded-up sushi bar, I wouldn’t have blinked.

It got me thinking about a childcare centre in Dickson, Canberra, that my friends send their kids to. They recently received an email from the centre that tried to put a polite spin on the impossible. “Over the past few years, we have worked hard to minimise fee increases and absorbed rising costs,” the message read. It was the kind of sentence you write before delivering bad news. The follow-up came quickly: “However, these costs are continuing to climb, following the 8.5% rise in educator wages.” The result? $195 per day per child. That’s not a fee. That’s a cry for help.

Meanwhile, another friend I advise has officially thrown in the towel. Saying “Australia’s too hard”. She’s off to the USA to launch her haircare brand, where apparently investors are still interested in business rather than strangling it with red tape and energy bills. Not everyone can flee to a more functional economy, though. Most small business owners are stuck here, holding their breath while the government keeps tightening the belt. Not their own belt, of course. Yours.

We are, it seems, living in the era of the high-wage, high-tax, high-energy-cost economy, where the only thing that’s low is morale.

Conditions for small business? Imagine playing Jenga during an earthquake.

And yet, these very businesses are the economy. They make up 97.2% of all Australian businesses. They contribute 33% to GDP, and they employ 5.1 million Australians. Not to mention, they train 42% of our apprentices. But yes, let’s keep pretending they’re fringe operators.

Our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently said, “From big employers to the millions of small businesses right around Australia, our government wants you to be able to resume your rightful place as the primary source of growth in our economy.”

Beautiful words. Like a Hallmark card. Too bad the actions don’t match the poetry.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers would have you believe we’re all on track, steady as she goes. Except GDP grew by 0.2% last quarter. Insolvencies are up 26.8%. A record 14,105 businesses collapsed last year. For every 100 new ones opening, 88 are shutting. If this is stability, I’d hate to see a crisis.

The system is clearly under pressure. This is the canary in the mine, folks. But instead of reaching for the emergency alarm, the political class is too busy getting a back rub from their corporate and union mates.

Why the silence? Well, unions don’t represent small business. Only 13% of workers are unionised, and that figure plummets in the small business world. No unions, no political fundraising, no lobbyists. Just grit, risk, and a whole lot of invoices.

Meanwhile, Treasurer Jim and Katy Gallagher, our Finance Minister, are letting policy be dictated by an ever-expanding bureaucracy. Public servants will soon outnumber the remaining shopkeepers. The Federal Government has become the only growth industry in town.

And it shows. While bureaucracies balloon, the real economy shrinks. The butcher, the baker, the dog-grooming candlestick maker: gone. We’re left with chains, franchises, and AI chatbots telling you your local store has been permanently closed.

Let’s not forget one of Labor’s more inspired policy moves: gutting the Export Market Development Grant. Once upon a time, a small business could get up to $150,000 to take their goods global. Now? Just $28,000. That’s not a grant, that’s a rounding error. Not content with that, they also failed to extend the $20,000 instant asset write-off into the next financial year, despite promising it pre budget. From July 1, it drops to a paltry $1,000-barely enough for an ok laptop. This doesn’t leave much incentive to make big purchases.

Meanwhile, they still define a small business as one with fewer than 15 staff. Because obviously, if you’ve got 16 employees, you’re basically a multinational. And let’s not forget the New South Wales government axed its Business Connect program, once a lifeline for small operators and the Victorian government casually killed off Partners in Wellbeing, a service that offered mental health and financial counselling to struggling business owners. Perfect timing.

But who’s thriving in this climate? The usual suspects.

Big corporations. Those unionised, well-fed giants are funded by your super. Yep. Australia’s super funds now own 30% of our banking sector. UniSuper dropped $400 million into Macquarie’s Green Energy and Climate Fund. While your power bill skyrockets, someone’s buying shares in the wind.

And Wayne Swan, Jim’s old boss, is now both ALP President and Chair of Cbus Super. So yes, the fox is redesigning the henhouse.

This isn’t just a conflict of interest. It’s a sitcom plot, except no one’s laughing. Big companies have lobbyists and funding. Small businesses have a battered EFTPOS machine and a dog-eared copy of last year’s tax rules.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Albanese says, “Let us continue to invest in our people. Back our businesses and back ourselves.”

Right. Then why does it feel like small business is being backed over?

Here’s a wild idea: simplify the tax system. Reform the GST. Bring back genuine small business support. Stop designing everything for corporations and calling it reform. Start treating the little guy like the national treasure he is.

Because this isn’t ideology. It’s identity. Do we want a country made entirely of Bunnings, bank branches and big-box behemoths? A land where the only small business left is the sausage sizzle out front of a multinational hardware chain?

That’s where we’re heading. Australia without small business isn’t just economically poorer, it’s culturally beige. No more quirky op shops run by retirees with a terrifying knowledge of porcelain figurines. No more cafes with hand-painted menus and a barista named Craig who remembers your coffee order and your kid’s first name. Instead, we’ll have algorithm-approved franchises, optimised for foot traffic and staffed by people who’ve been told to smile by a laminated sign in the break room.

In a world without small business, there’s no charm. No risk. No character. Just QR codes, loyalty apps, and “Have you downloaded our app today?”

Small business is where people take a punt. Where dreams either take off or crash into an empty tip jar but at least they tried. That spirit is disappearing, and we’re replacing it with receipts longer than your arm and CEOs who have never touched a mop.

When we lose small business, we don’t just lose jobs. We lose flavour. We lose soul. We lose Australia.

Mick Spencer is a small business advocate, author of “Start Before You’re Ready” and founder of BizBuilders