2025-26 Federal Budget
Last night I experienced the highs and lows of working with and supporting small business in Australia.
The night started great with the highs of being in a room full of people, working collectively to support small business and innovation in Australia at an event organized by Investment NSW. Whilst that was going on, the The Hon Dr Jim Chalmers MP, Treasurer released the 2025-26 Federal budget. And despite the Government stating they were backing small business, a look at the budget papers revealed that this was not small business friendly budget. Hence why my highs of an hour earlier turned quickly into lows.
Here are some of the things that I noticed when looking at the 2025-26 Federal Budget papers.
The 2025-26 Budget Strategy and Outlook (the main budget paper) mentions “small business” just 26 times out of 363 pages. The 2023-24 and 2024-25 equivalent budget papers at least mentioned “small business” 27 and 46 times respectively.
The main positive for small businesses with a power bill (which is not all small businesses) will get an additional $150 in credits applied to their power bill next year.
First Nations businesswomen and entrepreneurs will gain access to $3.4m in over 3 years for business coaching and mentoring program.
Hospo venues get some relief as indexation on certain alcohol duties gets suspended for a period of time.
And yes, there will be around $14m spent on bureaucrats to reduce rede tape and support small business.
But that’s where I see the positives end. Then come the downsides.
The biggest I feel is around what is not in this budget. The $20,000 instant asset write-off scheme has not been extended beyond June 30 2025.
Another one is around the banning of non-compete clauses in employment contracts. The budget papers say this will increase average wages by $2,500 per year – to be paid for by business owners. And there is the impact on your business, which depending on how the laws are written, as one economist gleefully stated “you absolutely don’t want to be able to stop departing workers from trying to poach your clients and your staff”. Just what business owners want to hear, staff stealing clients without any restriction.
And there are no new measures I can see to support small business deal with the never-ending red tape they have to deal with and provide some incentive for people to actually invest in their business.
Overall, the 2025-26 Federal Budget sets a fairly low bar for other parties to step over if they want to win the votes of the small business community.
Contact Wayne on wayne@arealcfo.com.au or 0412 227 052.
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