"Tough. It's tough. Small business is a place for the big-hearted because there is not a lot of profit being made. We are a low socio-economic area, and that makes it even tougher for business because customers just don't have the money to buy products or services."

Today Mr Brown sat in his Taree office to pore over details of the 2019 Federal Budget, and one focus of his attention was small business.

At the same time, Federal member for Lyne Dr David Gillespie released a Federal Budget media statement, and in relation to small business he announced the government was "backing small business by increasing the instant asset write-off to $30,000 and expanding its access, benefiting 3.4 million businesses."

Mr Brown said "few businesses would be able to take advantage of it" and offered up an intimate insight to his business as evidence.

"Now I know accountants are thought to be rich, and people don't need to pay them, and all the rest of it," he laughs. "But this is our dealings with our clients who are small businesses in our community."

"Yesterday I sent out the GPB Partners monthly statements for March and more than 40 per cent of my clients are 60 days plus in arrears, and 20 per cent are 180 days arrears - that's six months - we have become a bank.

"It is hard for us because we are also just a small business, and if the cash flow doesn't flow round then that's when an economy grinds to a halt, and that's exactly what we are seeing happening, and every one of our businesses is saying the same thing.

"We get on well with our clients, it's not as if they're just belligerent and saying, 'bloody accountant, we're not paying!', they genuinely can't and so we have a situation where all of the businesses that are six months in arrears are making some monthly attempt to pay us off - so we really have become a bank."

Mr Brown said that if he had the opportunity to sit down with federal treasurer, Josh Frydenberg to discuss the Budget he would say, "stop fiddling with the tax system and concentrate on regional jobs."

"For years accountants have said, the one thing you don't do in business is make tax-driven decisions; you make business and economic driven decisions - the tax break helps to make that decision but it's not the be all, and end all.

"If I was to sit down with the treasurer I would say, stop fiddling with the tax system and concentrate on regional jobs. I think the last numbers I saw for the MidCoast region were double the national average.

"If towns like Taree fall apart, the primary production industry falls apart, and so the food bowl stops. You have to support regional towns with the infrastructure - and I don't mean roads and bridges - I mean businesses. We have to keep the regional economies going that feed the cities."

Mr Brown believes it is time for the government, State and federal, to revisit the decentralisation strategy of the 1970s.

"Governments of the day in the 1970s saw the need to support regional Australia, and NSW especially pushed for the decentralisation of manufacturing, and Taree got the Steber group, Bonds ... there were half a dozen or more businesses and we grew them to be our biggest employers.

"Australia is now not a manufacturing country, it is a services country, so why is government not looking again at decentralisation of service businesses. Services that don't need to be in a city should not be there, they should be here and we would expand them."

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