INTHEBLACK August 2024 - Flipbook - Page 54
F E AT U R E
“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.”
MICHAEL BRENNAN, E61 INSTITUTE
awareness, acknowledges that “staying on
top of cyber threats can be a much bigger
burden proportionately for small businesses
than it is for a large firm”.
The Australian Government also oversees
the Self-Employment Assistance program,
which backs small or micro-businesses
through free mentoring, workshops,
accredited training and financial support.
While Lamb has seen Queensland
businesses launch and create sustainable
operations through the current program
and its earlier iterations, she also says
there is “a lack of awareness around a lot
of these government programs”.
Ord adds that programs such as
Self-Employment Assistance have helped
only a tiny number of small businesses to
date and need to level up.
“We need much more ambitious programs
to assist businesses to develop the capacity
and the capability to invest in technology,”
Ord says.
LESSONS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA
In the battle to get greater numbers of younger people setting
up businesses in Australia, CPA Australia’s Gavan Ord says
left-field options should be considered as part of the effort to
improve the nation’s economy, productivity and dynamism.
That could entail government and industry promoting to young
Australians the benefits of starting their own business – even
a YouTube channel, or an Instagram or TikTok-inspired enterprise.
“The YouTuber of today is the kid who was selling lemonade
20, 30, 40 years ago,” Ord says. “We always encouraged that
entrepreneurial behaviour, and we should look at YouTubing in
that light as well.”
Social media platforms can inadvertently teach users business
skills, such as content development and delivery, money-making
strategies and contractual obligations when dealing with the big
multinational platform operators.
54 INTHEBLACK August 2024
CHALLENGES TO OVERCOME
In Queensland, there are some
promising signs, with the Small Business
Commissioner’s Office estimating that the
number of small businesses rose by about
9000 in the six-month period to April
2024 to a total of 482,836 across the state.
However, shrinking margins are still taking
a toll on too many of them.
Lamb says government has a key role to
play with education and financial literacy,
“particularly with our tax system in Australia,
because it is incredibly complicated”.
Brennan attributes the declining rates
of self-employment in Australia to two
key factors.
First, the relative allure of being a wage
earner is greater now, compared with the
risk of being a business owner. “It could
be that the rewards just aren’t as great
as they once were,” Brennan says.
Second, there may be “too many
frictions and barriers in the way” of
businesses. “You have people who
would be entrepreneurs, but they find
the barriers, the paperwork and all
of that too forbidding.”
Brennan argues that greater exposure
to vocational and professional skills
is essential, and that lifting financial
literacy could promote a healthier
risk appetite among investors and
would-be entrepreneurs.
The nation also needs to consider
whether the tax system is guilty of
penalising success “more so than it
cushions failure”, he says.
TARGETING THE UNDER-40S
The Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey
reveals that businesses owned by
people under the age of 40 are more
likely to invest in new technologies,
innovate and grow, so CPA Australia
