Taking Care of (small) Business
Catherine Sayer on family business — and the biggest trust change in fifty years
Seventy per cent of Australian businesses are family businesses, employing half the workforce — and the woman who runs the peak body for all of them says the sector still isn’t recognised as a sector.
Who the association represents
Catherine Sayer is Chief Executive Officer of the Family Business Association, joining Tony Romano from Melbourne. Seventy per cent of Australian businesses are family businesses, and they employ half the workforce. Put family businesses and small businesses together, she says, and you are looking at more than ninety per cent of every business in the country.
Succession, and the founder who is eighty-nine
She gives a real example rather than a hypothetical: a founder of eighty-nine still in the chair, two daughters already in their sixties, and no succession plan in place. Her point is not that the family is unusual. It is that they are typical. Founders need to become comfortable with letting go, and with making an informed decision about who comes next, long before that decision is forced on them.
The discretionary trust change coming in 2028
The change proposed to start on 1 July 2028 is, in her words, probably the biggest change in forty or fifty years. The Family Business Association has lodged a submission with federal Treasury. Her concern is not income splitting — she accepts the government’s position on that. It is asset protection and succession, and the cost and complexity of restructuring for businesses that have held trusts for decades. She is asking family businesses to raise it directly with their local MP.
Payroll tax
Tony puts the case that payroll tax is grossly unfair: the more people you employ, the more you pay. Catherine’s answer is that he is far from alone — she hears exactly the same thing in every state.
Advocacy, and what the association is not
The association is a member of COSBOA and works closely with it, and does a significant amount of advocacy work. Catherine is clear about where its boundaries sit and what it can realistically influence.
The right to disconnect, and payday super
Two pieces of legislation that landed on small business recently. Her view on the right to disconnect is pragmatic: if everybody is reasonable it does not become an issue, and there is some protection there for the employees of the minority who are not.
Trust, and thinking in generations
The Edelman Trust Barometer finds family businesses are the most trusted type of business globally — which Catherine treats as a selling proposition the sector does not use nearly enough. Family businesses think in generations, she says, not in months and quarters. That longevity does not exist in many other kinds of business.
Artificial intelligence
“AI will never replace human judgment.” She is not against it — she thinks you have to be in it and using it, with systems and processes that free people to do more of the work that adds value. But relying on it to communicate for you, without human intervention, is not smart.
National Family Business Day
19 September. A day to make some noise about a sector that, on her account, still suffers from a lack of public understanding of what it contributes to the economy and to the community.