Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2026-2027
Mr VENNING (Grey) (12:36): I rise today on behalf of the engine room of our economy: our small businesses. In particular, I'm standing up for the small businesses in regional South Australia. Under this Labor government we're witnessing a complete disconnect between the Treasury benches and the daily reality faced by mum-and-dad enterprises.
Labor has comprehensively lost touch. They govern for big unions and big city projects, while leaving regional South Australian businesses out in the cold. In the budget released last month, only two per cent of the infrastructure pipeline was for regional Australia.
Look no further than the impending payday super changes that will roll out on 1 July. This government attempts to frame this as a simple administrative update. But, for a hospitality venue in Clare or a local manufacturer in Wudinna, it is a sudden, brutal drain on their cash flow.
Superannuation is not the issue here. We all know it's critical to our workforce system and a vital payment that all employees are entitled to. This is not the debate.
But, under this scheme, money will now leave businesses much sooner, fundamentally altering their working capital at a time when they are already being battered by high inflation, record energy costs and a raft of burdensome industrial relations changes. What specific support measures has the government offered to help these cash-poor businesses adjust? There are absolutely none.
Instead, they are forcing small operators, whose simple payroll systems were, previously, completely, perfectly adequate, to undertake expensive updates. And what happens when a local butcher or a publican makes an honest mistake or a late payment simply because they don't have the cash in the till? They'll be slapped with penalties.
If you want to see the government's true priorities, you need to look at the budget papers. The government allocated a petty $1.3 million to the Fair Work Commission to help small businesses navigate an increasingly complex and hostile dispute resolution system. Yet, in the same breath, they allocated $5.3 million to the CFMEU.
That's $5.3 million of taxpayer money to continue propping up the administration of the CFMEU. Small businesses are the self-starters of our nation. They work weekends.
They work nights. They sacrifice holidays and do everything to put themselves in a position to get ahead. I see this in my own electorate of Grey.
Let me tell you about Alby Pierson. Alby is a small-business owner. He runs Roadys Towing and Recovery in Moonta.
For businesses like his, Labor's budget and their inability to manage inflation and the fuel crisis have delivered doubt and uncertainty. He has told my office about the impacts of fuel prices and Labor's taxes on him and his family. He is unable to plan for future jobs.
He is unable to plan for the future of his business. He said: Previously, I was paying $6,000 per month on fuel. Last month, it was $12,000 and I was down 800 litres.
It is quite stressful. He also told me: I work hard 24/7, recently I went out to the Nullarbor and spent 4 days away from my family. While I was out there all I could think about was how half of the money from this will go to Albo.
He went on to say: We are digging into our savings. That can only go so far. Insurance is going up, rego is going up, even my mobile phone bills are going up.
His conclusion is one that many business owners share today: You can't forecast, you can't plan ahead, and you can't get ahead. This is the reality for people on the ground. Now we want them to adhere to a new superannuation system—talk about totally out of touch.
The rules of the economy are rigged against the self-starters. The compliance burden of industrial relations law, tax law and regulatory law falls on small businesses with the same weight as it does on big businesses. But small businesses do not have the HR departments, the legal teams or the lobbyists.
Labor can't manage money, so they're coming after yours.