The Treasurer calls this “the most important and ambitious Budget in decades”.
I would question that.
There may be some tax reform and trickle-down relief for workers, but there is nothing in this Budget that would benefit workers and families, especially in the coming months. At the moment, many are forced to choose between buying groceries and paying the electricity bill, paying a mortgage or car insurance, and for the small business owner watching fixed costs drive them close to bankruptcy, or for the young renter who cannot see a way into home ownership.
Australians, like my constituents of Fowler, will need to wait at least until July 2027 to see most of these measures take effect.
Would you define this as an “ambitious” Budget then?
SMALL BUSINESS – Is the Government keeping them in business?
I have visited many small businesses in Fowler and heard of their struggles to keep up with the rising costs of supply, energy, insurance, ingredients, equipment, and not to mention compliance and various government taxes and levies. Since my election, I have advocated for the instant asset write-off to be permanent and to increase to $50,000. The Government has moved in the right direction in this Budget, making it permanent, but the amount has been set at $20,000. Let us be clear: $20,000 is not enough. If any Minister had actually sat down with small business owners in south-west Sydney, they would know that the equipment needed to run a business today costs far more. Small businesses have been fighting for survival for years. That is why I have been asking not only to make the instant asset write-off permanent.
I do welcome the introduction of a loss carry-back policy from 1 July 2026, which allows businesses to access refunds on tax they have already paid, rather than waiting for profitability to return. This will give businesses a little breathing room within this struggling economy.
But here is the issue: while these measures somewhat help at the margins, they do not address the core pressures making small and local businesses unsustainable and unable to compete in the global economy. The crippling costs of production and operations, driven up by inflation and the ongoing cost of living crisis, remain unaddressed.
This Budget offers very little in the way of structural reform to bring down the cost of energy, transport or manufacturing in the long term. These are not theoretical pressures. They are the difference between a business being able to keep its doors open or being forced to shut down.
NDIS – When ‘function’ becomes the ‘tool’ to cut support
The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a broken system, but we must not break it further in an attempt to fix it. Tackling systematic abuse and fraud is necessary, but how this is addressed matters just as much as the reason why it needs to be addressed.
This Budget seeks to tighten eligibility rules and introduce a new functional capacity assessment tool to determine who gets onto the scheme and how much support they receive. This reform is meant to reduce total participant numbers and save the Government approximately $37.8 billion over the next four years. Part of this is also a substantial cut to social and community participation funding. The Government seems to have forgotten that behind those numbers are real people and real consequences for communities like Fowler.
Fowler has over 4,600 NDIS participants and sits within SA3 regions with more than 12,000 active providers, making it one of the most significant NDIS communities in New South Wales. Yet the support they receive, and the providers serving them, are under threat from reforms that were not designed with communities like ours in mind. Many speak a language other than English at home and rely on culturally safe supports delivered by workers who speak their language to navigate the scheme and manage daily life. At a recent NDIS community forum I held in Fowler, participating service providers shared stories of call centre-like, impersonal interactions with the National Disability Insurance Agency, the agency responsible for assessing participants’ needs, developing individual support plans, and making determinations over the level of funding a participant receives.
Advice given over the phone by someone who has never met a participant or sat with their family and carers should not be the standard for supporting anyone living with a permanent disability. It is particularly harmful not just to multicultural NDIS participants, but for those already facing additional and complex accessibility barriers.
Cutting community participation funding and tightening eligibility without clear cultural protections is not reform. It is risk-shifting onto the most vulnerable. I will be demanding firm assurances on interpreter access, culturally appropriate assessments, and face-to-face engagement for all new eligibility reviews. I will also be watching closely how the Government proposes to implement the functional assessment tool to ensure that it does not harm those it seeks to support.
HOUSING – The right intent, a plan that falls short
I understand the intent behind the proposed changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing.
Replacing the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount with inflation indexation, and winding back negative gearing on established properties, is framed as a step toward intergenerational fairness, particularly for young workers and renters locked out of the market. Negative gearing is when a landlord’s investment property costs more to run than it earns in rent, and the Government has long allowed them to use that loss to reduce their tax bill.
But good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.
We must be clear-eyed about the risk of unintended consequences. If investors step away from established properties and there is no immediate increase in new housing supply, rents will rise. And when rents rise, it is the very people this policy is meant to help who end up worse off.
Because the real issue runs deeper than tax settings.
Building a new home in Australia now costs approximately 47 per cent more than before the pandemic. In Sydney, government taxes, infrastructure charges and regulatory levies alone can add up to $576,000 on a new house and land package, nearly half the total price. Skilled tradespeople are in shortage. Materials remain well above pre-2020 levels. Council charges, utility connection fees and compliance costs pile on.
Here is the question I keep asking this Government: how exactly does reforming negative gearing and capital gains tax on established properties lead to more new homes being built?
From where I stand, the link is not there. There is very little in this Budget to address the actual cost of building. While I welcome the $85.2 million to accelerate skilled migrants in trade industries and provide new pathways for those already onshore to have their qualifications recognised, this does nothing to tackle the most significant barriers to the Government’s housing target. It does not address material costs. It does not address the layers of government taxes, infrastructure charges and levies that stack on top of each other before a single brick is laid.
The young people of Fowler, the generation this reform is supposedly for, deserve a real answer to that question, not a theory that plays out over a decade.
COST OF LIVING – WATO: What Are They Offering?
What Are They Offering? Presented as meaningful cost of living relief, I seriously question whether $4 to $5 a week will make a real difference to a Fowler family surviving on a single income, or a young person struggling to pay rent. But I will be honest: when you are struggling to provide for your family or staring at an electricity bill you cannot pay, I am not going to deny that this policy will mean some extra money in your pocket. What I will also tell you is that this is not a plan. This is a drop in a very large bucket, and it does not arrive until July 2027.
I welcome the $1,000 receipts-free work expense claim measure, which allows employees to claim up to $1,000 for work-related expenses without needing to provide physical receipts. This removes a significant barrier that has prevented many from claiming deductions they were already entitled to. However, it is a one-off, temporary measure that does not start until 2027, so it provides no immediate relief for workers struggling with costs today.
Energy rebates are ending and there is nothing in this Budget to structurally address electricity costs for households or small businesses. The fuel excise cut will expire at the end of June 2026 and there is nothing to replace it. Once expired, fuel prices could go straight back up. I note the Budget includes subsidies for electric vehicle drivers and I am glad for the small number of Fowler residents who will benefit. But what about the mums and dads, the truck drivers, the delivery workers, the tradespeople who run on petrol and diesel every single day? In a community where families depend on a car to get to work because public transport in south-western Sydney still does not take people where the jobs are, fuel and energy costs are not abstract statistics. They are the difference between keeping up and falling behind.
Therefore, I am asking the Government: where is the sustained, targeted cost of living support for the lowest-income communities in outer metropolitan Sydney?
FINAL WORDS
Fowler is a hardworking community that has overcome setbacks and barriers that most Australians never face. Families and small businesses have rebuilt their lives here from the ground up. Many came with nothing, not a dollar, not a word of English, but they came with determination, and they have given back to this country more than they have ever been given. Yet successive governments have taken them for granted, failing to invest in the infrastructure, the services and the support that would give people a real pathway out of hardship. That ends when Fowler has a voice that refuses to be ignored. I will keep fighting in Parliament for every family here, not because of which way you vote, but because you have earned it, and you deserve better.
Dai Le MP
Member for Fowler
info@daile.com.au