Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Last night's budget told you everything you need to know about this Labor government's priorities: in the macro, punish ambition, tax wealth, make it harder for everyday Australians to get ahead, lift rents, keep pressure on interest rates and, in doing so, crush the construction industry's willingness to build the homes we so desperately need. By Labor's own data, 35,000 fewer homes will be built over the next decade. But the true-believer, pro-union, anti-employer bias is in the microdetail of the budget, too. Last night the Albanese government set aside $5.3 million to prop up the CFMEU's administration, a union mired in allegations of corruption, criminal infiltration, intimidation and bikie links. How much money for small businesses trying to navigate the impossible morass of Labor's ever more complicated Fair Work system? It's $1.3 million.

Labor is spending five times as much on shielding the CFMEU as it is on helping small business find its way through the Fair Work quagmire Labor has created. Every day I meet small businesses being crushed by it—the cafe owner in Rosebud, the tradie in Hastings, the restaurant owner in Sorrento, the family business struggling in Somerville. All are expected to keep pace with Labor's endless industrial relations changes with next to no support. Australians are now literally paying more to keep a dysfunctional, corrupt union afloat than to help small businesses create jobs and opportunity.

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