Migrant-run small businesses key to rebuilding Australian economy and social ties, report says

Haipei Yu built a thriving Chinese medicine practice during her first 10 years in Australia, but when the pandemic hit she wasn’t able to treat patients and her income vanished for months.

Her clinic, set up in the front of her home in the eastern Melbourne suburb of Mitcham, relied on being able to see and interact with people, so work had to all but stop under Victoria’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Since the slow days of the lockdown, patients have started returning, and that will benefit not just Ms Yu, but the wider economy and her community, according to a new report released on Wednesday.

The Scanlon Foundation Research Institute report shows small businesses are critical to the ongoing economic recovery from the pandemic, and more than…