Time Clock Superstars

Irene: It’s 21 past 8:00 on Breakfast. We’re going to talk to a small business owner now. Peter Strong runs a book shop in Canberra. He is also an activist in the sector. He is in fact the executive director of COSBOA, the council of small business organizations of Australia. Peter good morning, welcome to Breakfast.

Peter: Thank you.

Irene: Peter there is a big spike in the number of small business bankruptcies. Does that surprise you?

Peter: That doesn’t surprise me. A lot of this, the surprise is that it took so long for it actually just to come out and what a shame. I think there is a lot of people, in particular the retailing audience are paying the same. They hang in there a long time and that’s actually the behaviour of the small business person.

Irene: Why has it? What’s gone wrong? It is not the interest rates necessarily, is that what are you suggesting?

Peter: In the world which I’ve seen, as much as retail, the rent had gone up, the cost has gone up, prices has gone up, and charges have gone down.

Irene: Sales going down would seem to be the clincher, what’s that about? Why are the sales going down?

Peter: A lot of that is the Internet and a lot of it is I think retail is starting to put different things in their shops to try and affect people. These people are experimenting and diversifying in such, so it’s a big spread out, it cost a lot more for shops and it cost a lot of people shopping online. They’re having this big impact.

Irene: In your area, it’s well documented. I supposed the impact of online shopping with e-books. Is there any sense of statistics of how big a whack online shopping is taken from the retail sector?

Peter: No, that’s why we keep asking for the better figures and I think the last thing I saw was 9 percent hit on retail which is quite big when you think of the margin in retail is high.

The shops though, a lot of the books shops within the country have an excellent attitude. Because a lot of these people diversified and they really got into e-books. They embraced change, they got involved with the small business and they have quite a good business. It’s an interesting story. 

Irene: Tell us a bit more about that. I mean people have dreams and dreams can go vast and sometimes it’s no one’s fault but the concept or something else. Tell us how stressful that is?

Peter: It is incredibly stressful, because it’s a very personal thing. The stress in the family, we all know in any family is under stress when people lose their jobs, families got to stretch, etc. For some reason in a small business world, we’ve lost the humanity about it. People don’t consider as people as much as they did 20 years ago, so bankruptcy—it’s not only a terrible thing for the economy, it’s a terrible things for the families and for the people that used to work in that business and the stress levels are incredible.

Irene: Peter, we hear a lot from big business over the raise in times since the GFC and beyond and particular from manufacturing in the recent 12 months about the high dollar. Is the high dollar impacting small businesses? Is that a factor here?

Peter: I think it’s impacting everybody. It’s impacting some small manufacturing areas, people that were exporting such, so they have to reinvent themselves and it also giving the opportunities to some small businesses, so we can because we got the capacity to change quickly. Some of them are seeing opportunity, people are going online, people are moving out of shops in some cases and back home and they’re selling online and they’re doing quite well. It has changed, many from prices—that is the issue for us.

Let’s just say, when you go and look at over cost, that’s still going up, a lot of this big differences, not all, but a lot of them are continuing to gauge and trying to get what they can. They are the ones who will suffer in the long run as their shops start to become vacant and these people not to pay a lot less rent and they should become part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Irene: Do you think small businesses gets a fair hearing in Canberra, big businesses that are sharing jobs get the headlines all right and often they get government support, but two million small businesses in Australia, the reality is most of us are employed in small not large organizations. Do you think there’s much understanding of that by the Prime Minister?

Peter: Twelve months ago, I would say there wasn’t. In the last six months the engagement we have  had from the government has been outstanding. Absolutely outstanding!

They actually have got the fact that we’re people and they’ve got the fact that we vote, and they also understand that they we were undone for a long time. We’re in constant dialogue with various business offices now, whereas twelve months ago we were not.

We’re talking about the small business commission on moving red tape. We’re talking about contract loss, so when we’re going signing lease for someone like we’ve feel that there’s a lot more advantage in it. We’re talking about responses to the people in small business, not about responses to business and it’s quite a change.

Irene: You’re listening to Irene Breakfast. Our guest this morning is a small business owner. He runs a book shops in Canberra, Peter Strong. Pete, if Kevin Rudd is putting small business front and center and part of his election pitch to his colleagues, if he runs for the Ballet on Monday.

From Washington he said, he would make small businesses his top priority if he got the leadership. He seemed to be hinting at tax breaks. Have you heard any conversation with Kevin Rod in recent weeks about what he would do for small business, because there are reports suggesting he has been talking to business leaders in a bid to build bridges?

Peter: No, I haven’t. I haven’t investigated, I will look it up. They have to give me a ring because I haven’t heard from him. I am really pleased to hear about Julie Gillard and Kevin Rudd, this means the small business quite often as I think just reflects the line of the party, it’s lie if no one asked.

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