As of June 2007, there were approximately 2.01 million businesses operating in the Australian private sector and 309 public sector organisations.24
The majority of private sector businesses (95.8 per cent) were small businesses with less than 20 employees. Of those remaining businesses approximately 3.9 per cent were classified as medium (employing 20-199 employees) and 0.3 per cent were classified as large businesses (200+ employees).
Research in Australia and internationally has demonstrated that preventing occupational injury and disease in small business is likely to require a different regulatory strategy from that for large organisations.25 The characteristics of small business mean that they may be vulnerable to higher rates of occupational injury and disease due to a lack of resources and OHS management expertise, as well as inadequate worker representation. They also have shorter life cycles, find compliance difficult and are inspected by regulators infrequently.26
The table below shows that the number of small businesses in Australia has increased from 846,300 in 1997 to approximately 1.93 million in 2007. At the same time, the proportion of small businesses as a percentage of all businesses has increased from 81 per cent to 96 per cent.27
