What a small business commissioner can actually do for you

Victoria's new commissioner arrives from Beyond Blue by way of the Fair Work Ombudsman. The combination says something about what the role has become.

Greg Jennings has been appointed Victorian Small Business Commissioner for a three-year term. He was chief engagement officer at Beyond Blue, where he led workplace wellbeing work including programs for small business owners, and before that a director at the Fair Work Ombudsman. He replaces interim commissioner Tim Symons, who took the role in March after Lynda McAlary-Smith became Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.

The appointment follows a A$400,000 allocation in Victoria's 2026-27 budget for the commission to employ additional dispute resolution officers, intended to improve access to low-cost dispute resolution. Victorian Small Business Minister Natalie Suleyman framed the commission's role as helping small businesses avoid and resolve disputes. Jennings has said he intends to continue the commission's advocacy and dispute resolution work. McAlary-Smith, who knows him, backed the appointment.

Most owners have no idea the office exists until they need it, so it is worth being specific about what it does. A small business commissioner is primarily a mediator. The classic matter is a retail lease dispute with a landlord, and the others are unpaid invoices, franchising disagreements and disputes with government agencies. Mediation is cheap, usually a few hundred dollars, and it is fast relative to a court or tribunal. In many retail lease disputes, going through the commission is a required step before a matter can proceed further.

What it is not is an enforcement body. A commissioner cannot order a landlord to reduce rent, compel a customer to pay or impose a penalty. The leverage is that the other side has to turn up, and that refusing to participate in good faith looks poor later. For a business weighing legal costs against a disputed amount, that leverage is frequently enough.

The background Jennings brings points at the part of the job nobody legislated. An owner in a lease dispute is not a party to a commercial disagreement in the way a corporate litigant is. The business is usually the house, the retirement and the identity at once, which is why mental health and dispute resolution have ended up in the same portfolio. A commission with more dispute resolution officers resolves matters faster, and faster is the variable that matters most to the person waiting.

Every state and territory has an equivalent, and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman covers federal matters.

Find your state commissioner's number and put it in your phone before you need it, because the point at which most owners go looking is the point at which they have already spent money on a lawyer. If you are in a lease, invoice or franchising dispute, the sequence that works is: put the dispute in writing to the other side, wait, then apply for mediation. It costs a fraction of a lawyer's first letter and it is often the step that is required anyway. Expect dispute volumes to rise through 2027 as leases signed in a softer market come up for renewal in a harder one, and expect the commissions to be the pressure valve for it. They are funded for mediation, not for enforcement, which is worth remembering before you pin hope on an outcome they cannot deliver.