Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Electoral Matters) Share this | Hansard source

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2026-2027 is where the rubber hits the road. This budget of betrayal is built on Labor lies and broken promises and becomes clear to all Australians. It has been sobering, to say the least, to listen to the stories of so many small-business owners in my own electorate offering a vastly different perspective to the propaganda that we are hearing from government MPs at the moment as to what these changes will have on their small businesses. So today I want to share the story of Ian, who has written to me as a local Bunbury business owner who founded his first small business 13 years ago, at the age of 26. Subsequently, he has built that business to employ 100 people. And since taking on his first apprentice in 2017, he has seen 33 young Australians successfully complete an apprenticeship and qualify as tradesmen.

He has also founded a charity that is dedicated to raising funds for childhood cancer after losing his son at the age of five in 2021. These are the sorts of Australians that I want to back, that I think the government should be backing, instead of attacking with this budget of betrayal and its taxes on aspiration.

Here's Ian's story. He's lived in Bunbury most of his life and now is proudly part of a family of five. Living a modest life as a sole income family, his dad worked at the Bunbury TAFE and then later for Wespine, something of a local institution, as it has been for decades. Ian worked in a factory as a teenager which was shut down shortly after the GFC, and his parents lost everything. This is a chap who's seen times when they're tough. Indeed, he founded his first business in 2013 with just $3,000 in the bank after being made redundant as a labourer on the construction—

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