INTHEBLACK August 2024 - Flipbook - Page 52
F E AT U R E
“There is absolutely no doubt that investment
in small business, particularly businesses that
have one to five employees, is where you get
the best returns.”
DOMINIQUE LAMB, QUEENSLAND SMALL BUSINESS COMMISSIONER
Queensland small business commissioner
Dominique Lamb believes small businesses
can step up again and make a difference.
She cites the February 2024 Small
Business Matters report from the Australian
Small Business and Family Enterprise
Ombudsman, which reveals that the
nation’s 2.5 million small businesses
account for a third of gross domestic
product (GDP) and about 5 million jobs.
“The numbers are there,” Lamb says.
“There is absolutely no doubt that
investment in small business, particularly
businesses that have one to five employees,
is where you get the best returns.”
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
EXPLORE
CPA Australia’s
Asia-Pacific
small business
survey 2023–24
LISTEN
to a With Interest
podcast on key
findings from
the APAC small
business survey
52 INTHEBLACK August 2024
Despite their potential, small businesses
face many challenges.
The CPA Australia Asia-Pacific Small Business
Survey 2023–24 highlights a “continuing
gulf ” in the performance and outlook of small
Australian businesses compared with many
Asian counterparts. It reveals that Australian
small businesses are “bottom or near to the
bottom of the class when it comes to growth
during the past 12 months”.
Although business owners aged 30 to 50
are most likely to innovate, the survey shows
that there is little momentum for younger
people starting enterprises in Australia.
“There is scope to improve the performance
and productivity of the Australian small
business sector,” says Gavan Ord, business
investment and international lead at
CPA Australia.
Australia cannot rely on government policy
settings alone to address under-performance,
Ord says. Small businesses will need to
embrace technologies such as ecommerce,
social media and digital tools, because
the slow pace of technology adoption
is hurting individual businesses and the
broader economy.
The nation also needs to rebalance the
demographics of small business ownership.
The experience of business owners aged
over 50 is crucial, but Australia also needs
a larger group of younger, tech-savvy
entrepreneurs who can deploy new
technologies and ideas.
“The productivity discussion in Australia
has been focused on competition policy,
industrial relations and red tape,” Ord says.
“They’re all important, but our data shows
it is a more nuanced picture.
“We need to expand the debate to include
other drivers of productivity, including how we
increase the proportion of young Australians
starting a business or buying a business.”
SMALL BUSINESS MATTERS
Michael Brennan, former chair of the
Productivity Commission, says productivity
growth comes down to the “individual
decisions made by business managers”
within large and small entities.
“There is always an implied critique
of government when productivity growth
is low, but ultimately productivity growth
is a market sector phenomenon,” adds
Brennan, who is now CEO of e61 Institute,
an economic research organisation.
As to whether more small businesses could
boost national productivity, Brennan believes
the strength of innovative startups is that
they pose “the threat of a new entry”, which
can keep large businesses accountable and
stimulate new ways of operating.
“In this way, the role of small business
is very important. It is a very significant
spur to competition and potentially a spur
to a lot of innovation.”
With the Intergenerational Report
endorsing a long-term productivity growth
assumption of about 2.2 per cent per year,
Brennan says the question is whether
Australia can return to the higher levels
