Penfold Tells Small Business Owners to “Get It Off Their Liver”

Alison Penfold wants small business owners across her New South Wales electorate to complain, formally and on the record, before August 28. The federal Nationals MP represents Lyne, a mid-north-coast seat running from Port Macquarie into the lower Hunter. She has built an entire section of her new survey around venting, bluntly titled “Get It Off Your Liver.”

The Bottom Line: Small Business Reality Survey asks owners from the Hastings to the Hunter to detail the costs, staff shortages and paperwork slowing them down. Penfold says the answers will drive advocacy in Canberra, a promise that depends on a government her party does not control.

What the Survey Covers

The survey takes about ten minutes to complete. It walks owners through the pressures Penfold says keep surfacing in conversations with local traders and family businesses across the electorate.

• Rising costs
• Workforce shortages
• Housing
• Infrastructure
• Energy
• Regulation and government red tape

Penfold frames that list as more than a set of compliance metrics. “They’re the backbone of our local towns, yet too often they feel like they’re treated as an afterthought,” she said, pointing to owners who sponsor junior football clubs, donate to school raffles and coach local sport alongside running their businesses. “Every successful small business owner knows that if you don’t listen to your customers, you won’t be in business for long,” she said. “Governments should learn the same lesson.”

A separate “Get It Off Your Liver” section then hands owners open space to write about whatever is actually grinding them down, unprompted by any multiple-choice list. Responses stay confidential, and any business from a sole trader to a larger family operation can fill in the ten-minute online form before it closes on August 28.

Small Business Confidence Is Still Underwater

Penfold’s timing lines up with a run of national data showing business sentiment still struggling to clear zero, more than a year into talk of recovery.

The bank’s quarterly and monthly business surveys track confidence on different scales, but both have spent most of 2026 below zero.

Even after June’s rebound, the monthly reading stayed underwater. Wage costs and labour shortages remain the single biggest constraint firms report, a complaint that lines up closely with the workforce and costs sections of Penfold’s own questionnaire.

From Hastings to Hunter

Lyne is a seat Penfold has held for barely a year. She won it for the Nationals at the 2025 federal election with a two-party-preferred result of 59.8 percent to Labor’s 40.2, a margin of 9.7 points, while Labor retained government nationally and Penfold’s Coalition moved to opposition.

Her primary vote told a messier story: 35.69 percent, against 19.83 for Labor’s Digby Wilson and 14.85 for independent Jeremy Miller. The electorate runs along the mid-north coast and into the lower Hunter, covering Port Macquarie, Taree, Wauchope and Gloucester, a mix of coastal tourism strips, farming country and small manufacturing towns.

Her office has run large-scale outreach before, including an earlier effort branded Lyne’s Biggest Survey, part of a pattern of asking constituents to self-report their priorities directly to her office rather than through party channels.

A New Watchdog Is Already Chasing “White Tape”

A federal watchdog is already doing similar work. Lynda McAlary-Smith, a lawyer, began a five-year ombudsman term in March 2026, running the statutory Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.

Her office is already digging into so-called white tape costs, alongside separate work on disaster resilience, government procurement access for small firms and right-sizing ESG rules.

• White tape – the compliance costs banks, insurers and big corporate customers push onto small suppliers, distinct from the red tape governments write into law themselves.

That statutory channel already feeds findings straight to government departments. Penfold’s form runs in parallel, outside that structure, gathering a similar category of complaint through a single backbencher’s electorate office instead.

Can an Opposition MP Deliver Reform?

Only partly, and not without Canberra’s cooperation. As an opposition backbencher, Penfold cannot rewrite tax settings, industrial relations law or energy policy on her own. What she can do is turn survey answers into a formal case and a local forum, then press the government to act on both.

Penfold has been explicit about wanting more than a filing-cabinet exercise.

I don’t want another glossy report that sits on a shelf.

Penfold said she wanted to hear directly from people living the challenges every day, so practical reforms could follow that cut unnecessary burdens and lift productivity. The results will feed a local Small Business Roundtable and future advocacy in Canberra, both of which rely on a government she has no seat inside.

“Small business owners understand risk because they live it every day,” Penfold said. “They invest their own money, employ local people and carry the responsibility of keeping their businesses afloat.” She added that governments “should spend less time assuming they know what’s best and more time listening to those who are actually creating jobs and growing our economy.”

Policy, she argued, should be built from the ground up instead of imposed from the top down.

What Happens After August 28

The survey closes on Friday, August 28. After that, Penfold’s office plans to compile responses into evidence for both the Canberra advocacy push and the planned Small Business Roundtable. Any business, from a sole trader to a multi-generation family operation anywhere between the Hastings and the Hunter, can take part, and individual answers stay confidential.

“The more businesses which participate, the stronger our case is to get the policies which help your business thrive,” Penfold said.

Whether that case moves a government she has no seat inside is a question the next budget cycle will answer.