No Australian study examines family businesses and LGBTIQA+ people in migrant and faith communities

Disclosure. Just Gold was a partner in the Victorian Government’s 2019 LGBTIQ+ Multicultural and Faith Project; its research team interviewed non LGBTIQA+ parents of Greek cultural background in Victoria.

Business income among permanent migrants

In September 2026 the Australian Bureau of Statistics published its latest figures on the settlement outcomes of permanent migrants who arrived from 2000 onwards, and one measure is directly relevant to small business. In 2023 to 2024, 14 per cent of those permanent migrants aged 15 to 64 received income from their own unincorporated business, compared with 12 per cent of the total Australian population of the same age. The proportion was highest, at 16 per cent, among humanitarian migrants who had lived in Australia for more than ten years, and lowest, at 9.2 per cent, among humanitarian migrants who had been in Australia for less than five.

The measure records income from a business, which is different from ownership. It also excludes businesses operated through a company, is not broken down by country of birth and provides no information on who else works in the business. Within those limits, it shows that income from one’s own business is more common among permanent migrants than in the population as a whole, and that among humanitarian migrants it is more common for those who have been in Australia longest than for recent arrivals.

The absence of data on family businesses

The number of these businesses that are family businesses is unknown, because Australia does not measure it. In 2013 the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services found that "there is no generally accepted definition of a ’family business’ either in Australia or internationally," and that "the ABS does not collect official data on family business." A question the ABS had included in its 2004 to 2005 Business Characteristics Survey was discontinued after problems with data quality. The committee recommended that government determine what family business data policy makers required, including "the number of family businesses from culturally and linguistically diverse communities." In October 2014 the government agreed in principle that "consideration should be given to the need for policy makers to collect appropriate data on family businesses." We have not found any current ABS series that identifies family businesses.

The Census comes closest, although it counts individual people and has no measure of firms. Its status in employment variable includes a category for contributing family workers, alongside employees and owner managers. That category indicates family involvement in work, but it cannot show which businesses are family businesses, who controls them or who will inherit them.

Research on LGBTIQA+ people from multicultural and faith backgrounds

Australian research on LGBTIQA+ people from multicultural and faith backgrounds is more developed than research on their working lives. Private Lives 3, the national survey conducted in 2019 by La Trobe University’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, reached 6,835 LGBTIQA+ people. Participants from multicultural backgrounds reported feeling accepted a lot or always less often than participants from an Anglo Celtic background in almost every setting the survey covered, and the difference was greatest for family: 45.8 per cent of participants from multicultural backgrounds felt accepted a lot or always by family members, compared with 55.2 per cent of those from an Anglo Celtic background. One third of participants from multicultural backgrounds, 33.0 per cent, reported that they had been treated unfairly by others in the past 12 months because of their ethnicity, cultural identity or heritage, more than five times the 6.5 per cent reported by Anglo Celtic participants. They were also more likely to report very high psychological distress, at 31.7 per cent compared with 26.7 per cent.

The findings on faith are mixed. Almost three quarters of Private Lives 3 participants, 74.2 per cent, reported no current religion or spirituality, and of the 1,236 religious participants who belonged to a religious or spiritual community and answered the relevant question, 35.1 per cent described that community as very or extremely LGBTIQA+ inclusive while 21.8 per cent described it as not at all inclusive.

These results come from an online survey promoted mainly through paid Facebook advertising, and only 161 participants, or 2.4 per cent, spoke a language other than English at home, which is a small base from which to draw conclusions about LGBTIQA+ people whose daily lives are conducted largely within a language community.

Government and community investment

Governments and community organisations have also invested in this area, and in 2016 the Victorian Government provided more than $500,000 to nine organisations, among them the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council, the Greek Welfare Society PRONIA, Marhaba and Muslims for Progressive Values, to raise awareness and improve services for LGBTIQA+ people in culturally diverse communities. In the same year, Deakin University and the Council provided the Victorian Commissioner for Gender and Sexuality with a report on supporting same sex attracted and gender diverse young people of multicultural and multifaith backgrounds. In 2019 the Victorian Government’s LGBTIQ+ Multicultural and Faith Project, delivered with Social Change Projects and community partners, piloted its approach with Victoria’s Greek and Chinese communities and scheduled separate consultations with LGBTIQA+ people and with parents of LGBTIQA+ people. In New South Wales, the Rainbow Cultures directory, created by ACON, the Australia and New Zealand Tongzhi Rainbow Alliance and ConversAsians and SocialisAsians, lists groups and services for LGBTIQA+ people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

This body of work concerns health, safety, acceptance and services, and none of the work we have found examines what happens to an LGBTIQA+ person’s livelihood when the family that accepts or rejects them is also the business that employs them.

Disclosure within a family business

For most employees, being out at home and being out at work are separate decisions. An earlier article in this series examined the gap between being out to colleagues and being out to customers, and in a family business those boundaries can disappear altogether. The parent who must be told may also be the employer, a sibling may be a co owner, and customers may belong to the same community, attend the same church or temple and speak to the same relatives.

This gives the gap in family acceptance recorded in Private Lives 3 an economic dimension that the survey was not designed to measure. Where acceptance is withheld, the cost to the person concerned can include a job, a share of the business or the expectation of taking it over. The 2013 committee identified succession as one of the subjects on which it wanted family business data collected, and for an LGBTIQA+ son or daughter, succession may depend on factors other than competence.

The evidence does not suggest that multicultural or faith communities are uniquely hostile. Private Lives 3 also shows that almost half of participants from multicultural backgrounds felt accepted a lot or always by their families, and the 2019 Victorian project consulted parents directly. Where family, community and income are bound together, however, disclosure carries consequences that do not arise with a separate employer, and we have found no study that measures them.

Implications for owners and researchers

For an LGBTIQA+ person working in a family business, the first practical step is to establish their formal position. Whether a person is a shareholder, a partner, a paid employee or an unpaid family worker determines what they can rely on if relationships change, and an accountant or lawyer who is independent of the family can explain what each arrangement means before it is tested. For peer support from people who understand both settings, the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council describes itself as a national body that advocates for multicultural and multifaith LGBTIQA+ people and provides referrals, and Rainbow Cultures lists multicultural and multilingual LGBTIQA+ groups and services.

For researchers, including the team preparing The State of LGBTQ+ Business in Australia, reaching these owners will require recruitment through multicultural LGBTIQA+ networks as well as mainstream channels, and in languages other than English. The research framework already commits to consent processes that address the risk of identification through business details, a risk that is acute in a small community, where a suburb and a trade can be enough to identify a family. Definitions also need care, since an LGBTIQA+ person who works in a business owned by their parents will not meet a majority ownership test, even though their future in that business may depend more than anyone’s on whether they can be open.

In a family firm, whether a person would keep their place in the business if they were out at home has to be settled before any decision about disclosure to customers, and research on LGBTIQA+ business ownership will need to ask about it directly.

Sources

Pride in Business publishes analysis on LGBTIQA+ economic participation in Australia. It is funded and published through Just Gold’s impact program.

Get The Briefing. A new analysis piece and research updates, by email every fortnight.

No Australian study examines family businesses and LGBTIQA+ people in migrant and faith communities

Business income among permanent migrants

The absence of data on family businesses

Research on LGBTIQA+ people from multicultural and faith backgrounds

Government and community investment

Disclosure within a family business

Implications for owners and researchers

Sources

More from The Briefing

What the 2026 Census will show about business owners by sexual orientation and gender

Recognising a supplier category does not by itself lead to purchasing

Record spending with certified social enterprises is not reported by owner identity

Corporate Pride commentary has overlooked procurement, which on public evidence was never built at scale