Opinion: Stressed self-employed Australians battling policies designed by people who don’t get workplace safety

We have all seen results coming from robodebt. The big lesson is that governments must now give proper consideration to the human impact of any proposed policy — not just the economic impact or the budget gains or the electoral benefits or the ‘ideological’ wins.

The first consideration is the potential mental health impact on people — all people. Whether they be the unemployed, foreign students, those with disabilities, the poor, or those in the middle and the self-employed. Governments have an absolute duty to do the right things by the people.

One area that is not talked about enough is the wellbeing of more than two million self-employed Australians, who employ more than half of all workers.

A recent Commonwealth Treasury report highlights the mental health crisis for the self-employed. The report states just over one in five small business respondents have been diagnosed with a mental ill-health condition by a doctor or health professional. And more than one-third of small business respondents from retail trade and accommodation and food services had received a medical diagnosis of mental ill-health.

It is a fact that the self-employed are put under constant stress by overly complicated policies designed by people who don’t get it.

Take Safe Work Australia (SWA), for example. I was once told by their CEO that a self-employed person is legally responsible for their own mental health. How? If a contractor gets clinical depression, will we fine them or send them to jail?

SWA writes OH&S policy for all Australian workplaces — big, medium and small — but never considers the health of the more than two million Australians who lead them. SWA is well known in Canberra as being an unhappy organisation with a high staff turnover; an indication that perhaps the organisation that writes OH&S policy understands left-wing ideology but not good safe management practices.

Then we come to workplace relations. We all know that the system is far too complicated. Even experts such as the unions’ preferred lawyer, Maurice Blackburn, have got it wrong and had to pay back millions to workers for salary underpayments.

The system is so complex that it is impossible to get it right 100% of the time, making it equally difficult to regulate effectively. The system is ambiguous, convoluted and largely designed by people who do not employ other people.

The ALP understood that dilemma when in opposition. They promised that, if elected, they would make workplace relations less complicated for self-employed, small business people. But the Albanese government broke that promise and has done the exact opposite, creating more complexity and stress for over 900,000 Australian employers and their employees.

With robodebt, horrific events were created by ignoring the bona fide interests of welfare recipients. Now this government is advancing an IR agenda that is difficult and stressful for the business owners that workers rely on for their livelihood.

So far, not so good.

This also creates a significant challenge for the Department of Workplace Relations. Do they blindly follow the instructions of the government — like the Department of Social Services before them? Are they meeting their obligation to provide fearless and objective advice to ensure that policy is developed for the benefit of all Australians not just the power needs of a few?

It is proven that a healthy safe workplace is one where employers and employees can easily and readily understand the rules. We do not have that situation.

But the issues don’t stop with OH&S and IR — the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is a further example of failure to consider the wellbeing of small business owners.

Some years ago, I received a phone call from the AHRC demanding that I get small businesses involved in a mentally healthy workplace program. After some discussion, I asked ‘does the AHRC care about the mental health of the self-employed?’ After a longish pause, the response was ‘I’ll have to check’. This absence of any focus on the health of the self-employed amounts to discrimination by the AHRC itself.

The report mentioned above from Treasury shows just how dire things are for the mental well-being of the self-employed. But nobody in power seems to care. If they did, they’d make the system simpler, fairer and easier for employers and their employees to understand and follow — like they promised. That would have a positive impact on workplace safety, industrial democracy and discrimination. It would be easier for SWA, FWO and the AHRC to enforce the rules.

It’s time for public servants to be held accountable for telling the truth and advancing honest policy for the workplace. Promoting a policy that puts the health and wellbeing of Australian small business owners and workers in jeopardy merely to keep a particular minister ‘happy’ is not good enough.

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

This article was first published by The Mandarin.