Anyone can start a business in Australia regardless of their citizenship or residency status. However, there are certain requirements that must be met in order to legally operate a business in Australia.
- You must have an Australian Business Number (ABN) and register for goods and services tax (GST) if your business has a turnover of $75,000 or more.
- You may need to obtain licenses and permits specific to your business and industry.
- You will also need to comply with Australian laws and regulations regarding business operations, including workplace health and safety, consumer protection, and fair trading.
- If you are not an Australian citizen or permanent resident, you will need to obtain the appropriate visa to work and operate a business in Australia.
It is important to consult with the relevant government agencies and professional advisors to ensure that you meet all the necessary requirements and comply with the regulations.
What is popular now
Popular start-up businesses can vary depending on location and industry, but some examples of popular types of start-up businesses include:
- E-commerce businesses: Online stores or marketplaces that sell products or services.
- Technology businesses: Software development, app development, and other tech-related businesses, including SaaS (Software as a service) to support other small businesses
- Service-based businesses: Consulting, coaching, and other professional services.
- Food and beverage businesses: Restaurants, cafes, food trucks, and other food-related businesses.
- Health and wellness businesses: Gyms, spas, and other businesses related to health and wellness.
- Social media and digital marketing: Social media management, digital marketing and other online advertising businesses.
- Home-based businesses: businesses that can be run from home, such as tutoring, pet-sitting, and home cleaning, online business managers, and virtual assistants.
- Home renovation and remodeling businesses: Businesses that specializes in home renovation, remodeling and maintenance.
It’s important to note that there are many more possibilities for start-up businesses, and it’s always a good idea to research and consult with experts to identify opportunities in your area.
Popular Small Business roles
If you are looking to start a business that provides services to help other small businesses, then you can look at the popular jobs advertised on the internet to see where the skills gaps are in Australia. If big business takes up all this talent, Small Businesses are unlikely to find someone who only wants to do a couple of hours of work a day as a casual employee.
This is why the gig economy has taken off. Not only do you get work from one small business, they tell all their mates in business about you. That’s how Paula from Beyond the Maze started her VA business 9 years ago. Now she has 8 people working for her to fill the demand. Including now being able to afford a personal assistant, and living the dream of most business owners who want to spend more time with their families.
While LinkedIn has produced a report of the top 25 job roles worldwide, The internet vacancy index available through the Australian government’s labour market portal may give you a better idea of the contractor work that is available.
If you look at the work that is done by Virtual Assistants, usually business administration and customer contact roles (including online sales), there are over 40,000 jobs advertised that require these skills every month in Australia alone. For people based in Australia. The main reason Australian businesses contract work to overseas VA’s is no longer because of the cheap hourly rate. They are happy to pay Australians to do it, going by the number of ads for them, they just can’t find them to do it.
Advertised jobs
The top 2 advertised job roles in Australia have over 40,000 positions advertised every month. As, usually, larger businesses advertise jobs on the internet, this number doesn’t take into account the 2.4 million local small businesses. 85% of small businesses are micro-businesses, with under 5 employees, if they can find people to do these jobs, that is. Many just give up looking for help.
Forcing people into these jobs is not the answer either. If these jobs were filled by long-term unemployed, so-called “dole bludgers”, and were forced to take up jobs in the top 3 advertised roles, Australia would run out of job seekers in just 4 month time.
Or if you wanted to force them to help small businesses, there would only be enough long-term unemployed to help 1 out of every 10 small businesses. So who would you like to make that decision?
That’s why businesses that provide service to small businesses don’t have any trouble getting work. So if you are looking to get a pay increase for your office job, working flexible work hours, most likely from home, self-employment is a viable option.
Overcoming low pay rates
Recent changes late in 2022 to Australia’s fair work act have put a renewed focus on closing the gender pay gap. It’s not just about increasing the minimum wage in female-dominated industries. Just about all businesses learned the difference between working from home and being set up to do remote work, thanks to COVID-19 lockdowns.
People who have set themselves up to do work under flexible work arrangements outside of the office need to have more skills than people working in the office. Adult Self-management skills that require fewer managers to supervise. Improve processes to get more work done in less time to maintain a work-life balance. Not to mention WHS laws cover the time to travel to and from work.
If a business says you are suitable to do remote work from home, you should be paid more than the people doing the same job in the office. Not just for your higher skills add value to the organization, but it cost the business less to employ you.
Add in carers and aid, and you have 3 female-dominated industries at the top of the internet job adds, where fair work is trying to increase the minimum wages. Overcome previous discrimination over pay rates with gender bias factors in professions where cheap overseas alternatives exist.
Calling BS from Big Business
We’ve seen this argument used by Coles and Woolworths as to why they keep the price of a 2 lt bottle of milk at 1980’s prices. “we can’t pay the farmers more, as our customers can’t afford a price rise”. In Queensland, dairy farms had to close down as they could pay the bills, and now the supermarkets have to ship milk up from Victoria (and have done so for many years).
Where are we now? from $2 a bottle to, what, over $3? I wouldn’t know as I only buy non-homogenized milk. When I spoke to the dairy farmers they explained why I should do that, that’s also how I found out about “farmgate” prices.
Did you know that coffee farmers around the world on average only get $0.07 (7 cents) per kg for the coffee they grow? Luckily there are Aussie companies like AgUnity to help some of the poorest farmers around the world. But like many Aussie startups, they have to operate overseas. Using blockchain technology with people that have never owned a smartphone, and working with fairtrade organizations and NGOs to lift farmers out of poverty (UNSDG #1). But in Australia, the lucky country, they don’t operate as I doubt most people here knows what real poverty is.
Who are big businesses to set what people can afford, particularly when customers realize the cost to human lives? If it’s not droughts or flooding rain, it’s the mental health issues that have the greatest loss of human life.
Why do remote workers have to live in the metropolitan area I wonder? You can ask the new Queensland Chief entrepreneur that, next time she travels to an event in Brisbane from her home in Goondiwindi. Google it if you don’t know where that is.
How is the commission helping Small Businesses?
The Fair Work Act now has a new equal remuneration principle to guide the Commission’s consideration of equal remuneration and work value cases. This is to help the Commission issue pay increases to workers in low-paid, female-dominated industries, particularly in big business for example.
To say it will hurt small businesses first is crap. The big businesses regularly lock up talent by giving them more hours, when they get them in that is. So their talents go to waste and they do extra work not related to the primary role. Usually urgent but not important tasks, which devalues the employee, and big businesses blame employees for “quiet quitting”?
“people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses” – Simon Sinek
Whereas Small business says “I can only afford to pay [this amount]”, and contractors learn how to get the work done faster. Which essentially increases the contractor’s hourly rate as they can work for more than 1 client.
For equal remuneration cases, the Commission can now make an equal remuneration order (ERO) on its own initiative as well as on application.
When considering an application, the Commission:
- can consider comparisons between occupations and industries or if work has been undervalued based on gender historically
- isn’t limited to comparing similar work and doesn’t need a male comparator
- isn’t required to find discrimination based on gender if considering a comparison or if work has been historically undervalued based on gender.
If you are looking for where the increased wages could come from, have a look at the job roles below. The business admin-related role with the lowest number of female employees has the highest earnings. Yet their customers are predominantly female users, who would be better suited to teach new customers how to use the technology.
Or, maybe big businesses can stop employing highly skilled people and get them to do low-paying jobs under the veil of “job security”. These are the first jobs that get cut back.
How do you get a job doing what you love? Book a free chat here and discover who wants to hire you.
It’s the highest requested job for us to find someone to do… Train people to use the technology admin staff use every day. And the only question employers ask in the interview is “why do you love doing that”.
We think it’s about time you got paid what that’s worth, don’t you?
