Small business not convinced there’s much in Budget for them but see bigger picture

There was little in the State Budget to excite small business owners with no change in payroll tax and no energy bill credit.

Scott Jones has owned Diabolik book and record store in Mount Hawthorn for more than a decade.

With this Budget Mr Jones said he was not holding out for much help.

“The only thing that they can possibly help me out with is just another way of offsetting power costs,” he said.

“But in many ways, I don’t see what the State Government can actually do to help business, a retail business in Australia, especially under a Federal award.”

He said he was not surprised when the Budget was released.

“I can’t see anything that’s going to change anything, it’s not gonna make things any better for us,” he said.

“But then again, I didn’t know what to expect to start with anyway, it’s usually the federal budget that’s more important for me.”

While there was little in the Budget to help him, he saw investments to improve housing, health and infrastructure as potentially beneficial to him too.

Mr Jones said he could see the benefit of broader cost of living relief on his business.

“Anything that can bring down the cost of living, even if it’s just for home buyers or just increasing housing supply to make rent cheaper, any anything like that, in my opinion, is a good thing in for retail anyway,” he said.

Mr Jones said he hadn’t seen anything in thew Budget which would specifically help him.

Over the years Mr Jones said it has become more difficult to run the business.

“It’s certainly more difficult to turn a profit with increases in expenses well, just across the board,” he said.

“A lot of it is to do with freight costs and obviously with wage increases, which in my opinion, were well and truly overdue anyway.”

Mr Jones said he had made changes to his own work roster to keep the store running.

“It just means that my wife and I basically are working more, we do longer hours,” he said.

“We’re doing longer hours probably since COVID finished, it’s just necessary if you want to be open like we are for seven days, you have to put in the hours.”