National Family Business Day

I rise today to recognise National Family Business Day on the eighteenth of September and, in doing so, to honour the immense role of small and family businesses in our state, in my electorate of Dunstan, and across Australia. 

For me, this is a deeply personal subject. I was a small business owner myself; my husband is a small business owner, my sister is building her own small business as I speak, and I come from three generations of small and family business owners. In my family there have been artists, architects, writers, newspaper owners, department store owners, shopkeepers, farmers and tradies, all of whom worked with their own ideas, their own hands, and needed to rely on their own creativity and resilience to build a living. 

This personal background has given me a clear understanding, indeed personal experience, of the relentless pressures, but also the profound rewards that come with running a small enterprise. I know what it is to balance a profit and loss statement, to put aside tax and GST, to face the hard arithmetic of making the numbers add up at the end of every month, before calculating your own share of your earnings. 

This experience shapes the way I speak with business owners in my community, because I know first-hand that running a family business is not simply a matter of trading goods or services. It is a life, a livelihood and, often, a legacy. 

The trials are significant. Owning a small or family business means living with constant responsibility. It means carrying the mental load of knowing that every decision has consequences not only for yourself, but also for your family and your staff. It means lying awake at night worrying about whether the bills can be covered or takings will be enough to meet payroll, about whether a downturn in trade will undo years of effort. The work is relentless. Holidays can be rare. Days off are often not possible. If you become ill, the business still has to keep going. 

And these pressures weigh heavily on mental health. Studies into the wellbeing of family business owners point to higher levels of anxiety, financial stress and isolation. Unlike in larger firms, where burdens are spread across teams and departments, in family businesses the weight is concentrated. You are the business development manager, the sales manager, the accounts manager, the customer service manager, the HR manager, and the cleaner, and more. There is no leaving work behind when you close the door at night, because the work comes home with you. 

But it is also important to recognise the other side of this story. For all its relentlessness, family business ownership brings unique opportunities. It gives people flexibility, the chance to shape their own hours, to pursue their own ideas and to express their values through their work. It is entrepreneurship in its purest form: the courage to back your own vision, to test an idea in the marketplace, and to take pride in creating something that carries your name. It allows people to innovate quickly, to adapt without waiting for board approvals, and to pass on skills, trades and traditions to the next generation. 

In South Australia, these businesses are not just part of the economy, they are the backbone of it. Almost all of the enterprises in our state are small or family-owned, and they collectively employ hundreds of thousands of South Australians. We rightly call ourselves the small business state, because it is small business that powers our economy, supports our workforce, and keeps our communities vibrant. 

In my community of Dunstan, the importance of family and small business is lived and visible every day. The Parade in Norwood, our local shopping strips, our small manufacturing precincts, and our home-based businesses all tell the same story: that the life of our community is tied to the health of our small and family businesses. 

Let me share a couple of examples. Many members will know Pave Café on The Parade. Its owner, Remu, worked for many years at Café Bravo a few doors up, before taking the leap to open his own café. That leap is one so many small business owners will recognise: the moment when you decide to put your own ideas to the test, to invest your savings, to take on the lease, to employ staff, and to back yourself. Like all café owners, Remu has faced at times enormous challenges: surviving through the Covid years, with the uncertainty of lockdowns and restrictions, and the continuing challenge that weather brings, given his unique business location. Yet he continues to open his doors each day, to serve his customers, and he’s not just made a place for himself and his team on The Parade, he has a devoted and loyal customer base. His story is not unusual, but it is emblematic of the courage and determination that defines family businesses everywhere, and also of the wonderful support and close relationship many small businesses enjoy in their communities. 

Another small family business owner who comes to mind is Peter, a local gardener who, like many family businesses, works in partnership with his partner Kerry. Due to the manual nature of their work, their livelihood depends on their both being fit and healthy. Recently Peter faced a serious health difficulty that left him unable to work for several weeks. Unlike an employee who can draw on sick leave, or a larger business with staff to cover absences, Peter and Kerry simply went without income. That is the harsh reality of being a sole trader or family partnership: when you cannot work, there is no safety net other than your own savings. And yet, Peter and Kerry returned, because the work they do, the relationships they have with their clients, and the independence they value, all keep them going. 

These stories are repeated across Dunstan. They are the stories of the picture framer on Magill Road, the podiatrist on Kensington Road, the family restaurants that have served generations, the tradies who start work before dawn, the artists and crafts people selling their craft at markets. They remind us that small businesses are not faceless entities; they are people in our community who open their doors each day with determination, and who deserve recognition in this place. 

One of the privileges of my role is to stop in and speak with local business owners. I greatly enjoy those conversations, because they are candid and practical. Business owners tell me about their challenges with staff shortages or the weight of business insurance and rent. They tell me about the difficulty of paying wages when cashflow is tight, and the stress of keeping up with tax and superannuation obligations. But they also tell me about the pride they feel when a new idea works, when a customer returns, or when their children show interest in continuing the family business and a succession plan has been agreed to. These conversations remind me every day that behind each shopfront or service van is a person who has chosen to take a risk, and who lives with both the strain and the satisfaction of that choice. 

We must be clear that family and small businesses do not just contribute economically, although their contribution in that respect is immense. They also shape the social fabric of our communities. They sponsor local sporting teams. They provide work experience for young people. They donate prizes for school raffles. They act as informal meeting places, where neighbours and friends connect. In many ways, they are the glue that holds our local communities together. 

At a national level, family businesses account for the overwhelming majority of enterprises in Australia, and together they employ around half of our workforce. They are a critical component of our national economy, contributing hundreds of billions of dollars to GDP. When we speak of innovation, productivity, employment and resilience, we are in large part speaking of the work of family and small enterprises. 

National Family Business Day is an opportunity to acknowledge these truths. It is a time to celebrate the ingenuity, the creativity and the courage of family business owners. It is also a time to be honest about the challenges they face, and to recommit ourselves to supporting them. That means reducing unnecessary or outdated regulation, providing fair access to government contracts, supporting training and mentoring, and recognising the particular mental health challenges that come with the relentlessness of family business life. It also means ensuring that tax and regulatory systems are fair and transparent, so that small business owners can focus on running their business rather than navigating unnecessary complexity. 

In celebrating National Family Business Day, we celebrate much of what is best about South Australia. We celebrate the willingness to take risks, the pride in craft, the commitment to family and community, and the resilience to keep going in the face of difficulty. We celebrate the fact that South Australia is the small business state, and that in electorates like Dunstan, small and family businesses are at the heart of who we are. 

I pay tribute today to the artists, the drapers, the shopkeepers, the farmers and the tradespeople in my own family, who showed me what it means to work hard, to back your own ideas and to carry the responsibility of business ownership. I pay tribute to Remu, to Peter, and to all the business owners of Dunstan who continue to demonstrate courage and resilience. And I pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands of small and family business owners across South Australia and the nation, without whom our economy and our communities would be immeasurably poorer. 

Family businesses embody resilience, creativity and community. They are, in every sense, the backbone of our state. On this National Family Business Day, let us honour them, support them, and ensure that their legacy for generations to come.