Peter Strong: It’s time to tackle the mental health crisis facing small business owners

A new Treasury report released this week highlights the mental health crisis facing millions of small business owners.

Not all small business owners are under stress, yet in many sectors one-third of them are. If one-third of workers were under stress at work we would — and should — do something.

So if a large number of small business owners, who employ more than 4.5 million others, are having mental health problems, why is that not a high priority?

Part of that report states “22% — just over one in five — small business respondents reported having been diagnosed with a mental ill-health condition by a doctor or health professional”, it also highlights that: “More than one-third of small business respondents from the manufacturing (36%), retail trade (34%), accommodation and food services (34%) industries had received a medical diagnosis of mental ill-health.”

This outcome shows the failure not just of governments but of those responsible for health policy, and the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

Over the years federal governments and the AHRC have continued to place more and more demands on small business people.

Furthermore, the agency responsible for workplace OH&S policies — Safe Work Australia — doesn’t understand the health needs of small business people to the point where they state that a self-employed person is legally responsible for their own mental health.

Would a small business owner diagnosed with depression be fined or sent to jail for letting this illness happen to themselves? It simply doesn’t make sense.

This is a problem caused not by those who deliver health services — good professional people — but by those that make policy, who create extra — often unmanageable and unnecessary — processes and demands. And governments keep adding more demands while saying they care deeply for small business people.

Since the current federal government came to power in May, we have seen pressure on small business employers increase through the creation of domestic violence leave.

The government is failing both the victims of domestic violence and employers.

It should have given the experts in the welfare sector the capacity to provide leave payments through Centrelink. Then the victims would not have the stress of disclosing their private lives in the workplace, and the small business employer wouldn’t have the stress of another person’s private life to manage.

The government has provided $3.4 million to help small business people understand their domestic violence obligations. Experts spend three or four years at university learning how to support domestic violence victims. Yet the government thinks $3.78 cents per small business employer to help them deal with DV is sufficient, showing a complete lack of respect for business people.

We have also seen the AHRC and the government joining forces to make small business owners responsible for the behaviour of their workers.

The Respect@Work legislation claims to fix the harassment of female workers by making the employer responsible for another person’s behaviour.

Sexual harassment is a societal issue and needs to be confronted by society, not by small business owners, a fifth of whom have mental health issues.

What do these self-employed people have to do as well?

Let me spell it out: rent, leases, accessing finance, OH&S, workplace relations. Dealing with suppliers. Paid parental leave. Late payments. Lack of supplies and products. GST. BAS. FBT. Payroll tax. Workers’ compensation. Local health regulations. Charts of accounts. Superannuation. Centrelink payments. ABS survey activity. Lack of workers. And so on and on.

Certainly not always all of the above, but running a small business is a lot of work. The Australian workplace relations system is noted as the most complicated in the world and is about to get worse. Not great for the fifth of employers already diagnosed with a mental health issue.

In the last 20 years, we have seen increases in complexity and stress by constant changes in key processes such as superannuation collection, training obligations, OH&S, payroll management and so forth. There have been unwarranted attacks and abuse of small business people on social media.

We had a past president of the ACTU refuse to condemn the physical intimidation of women in business by union representatives.

Others have ridiculed the compliance work that small business people do as ‘nothing much’.

We have seen small employers in tears during the pandemic and the bushfires before that, trying to keep their employees employed and their families together.

Imagine you are a small business owner. Your staff depend on you. Sporting teams depend on your sponsorship, the ATO depends on your BAS, you can’t get supplies, you can’t find essential workers, the price of everything is going up, wages are going up.

Imagine then that the government and the AHRC increase complexity and your workload. You also have a family and your own life.

Then some of your big business customers are not paying you for the services and goods you provided. When will they pay?

Time for the AHRC to step up and demand the self-employed are treated like human beings and not as prey of the ruling class of left- and right-wing ideologues, laissez-faire economists, uninformed policy boffins, workplace health policy agencies, unions and big business.

Governments and society must take this seriously for the sake of the self-employed, their workers, the economy and families.

Congratulations to Treasury for a report putting a human face on those normally treated as just a faceless economic unit.

Peter Strong is the former chief executive of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia.