The Senate Perspective

When I saw this address billed as “The Senate Perspective”, I wondered how many people had woken hoping to hear a speech about the Senate. Most Australians are thinking about their businesses: finding workers, managing rising costs and making investment decisions in an increasingly difficult economy.

So why talk about the Senate? Because many of the decisions shaping Australian businesses pass through it. The laws that determine energy costs, tax obligations, workplace relations and environmental approvals all pass through that Chamber.

Once those Bills are passed, they stop being debates in Canberra and become rules every Australian business has to follow. They show up in payroll costs, power bills, workplace obligations, approval timeframes and investment risk.

That is why the Senate matters. It is meant to be Australia’s house of review, where legislation is tested before it affects millions of Australians. Over the past four years, particularly since the last election, that safeguard has largely disappeared.

Labor’s 30 senators and the Greens’ 10 give them the numbers to control the Senate. Deals are struck behind closed doors and legislation is guillotined through the Chamber with little to no scrutiny.

When the Coalition was last in government, it was very different. Significant Bills had to win the support of a politically diverse crossbench, including the independents of the Nick Xenophon era. That required negotiation, compromise and genuine consultation with business before legislation became law. Today that discipline is gone.

Labor and the Greens have used their Senate majority to revive the failed ideas of the 1970s: bigger government, bigger spending, more regulation and more union power. Many of the policies driving that agenda were never put to Australians at the last election. Labor’s National Conference made clear that there will be no change of course, and Australians are living with the consequences.

This is the product of bad policy, not bad luck: deliberate policy choices pushed through a Senate where the Government never had to make its case or win an argument. Bad policy can be changed. It starts with a change of government.

Despite the past four years, this is still the greatest country on earth. Few nations have what we have: extraordinary resources, skilled people, strong institutions and businesses prepared to invest and take risks.

Yet Australians are working harder than ever and not getting ahead. Living standards have fallen, productivity has stalled, business confidence has weakened and too many young Australians doubt they will ever own a home.

Across Australia, I hear the same story. These are not ideological complaints. They determine whether a business hires another apprentice, invests in new equipment, or closes down.

So how did a country with every advantage end up here? When the Coalition left office in 2022, Australia had just come through the biggest economic shock since the Second World War, and measures such as JobKeeper had kept Australians in their jobs. The challenge was clear: restore discipline, lift productivity, reduce the size of government and give business the confidence to invest, employ and grow.

Under Labor, Australia has taken a different path. From the Senate, I have watched it happen one Bill at a time. That matters because policy is cumulative. No single law changes a country overnight, but regulation, taxes and bureaucracy accumulate. Businesses do not experience them one at a time, but feel their combined weight. That weight is holding Australia back.

The numbers tell the same story. Australia has suffered one of the largest falls in living standards in the developed world. Spending keeps rising and Commonwealth debt has now passed one trillion dollars. The only thing keeping the economy growing is population growth, with the Government using mass migration to disguise the decline. Since Labor took office, more than two in three of the jobs created have been taxpayer-funded, while the private sector that pays for everything is left idling.

In 2024, of the 484,000 jobs created across Australia, only around 99,000 were in the private sector. At the same time, the Commonwealth public service grew by more than 40,000 people to more than 210,000, yet processing times went backwards.

In real terms, government spending has soared by $5,000 per taxpayer per year under Labor. Government, spending and the bureaucracy have all grown, while productivity has gone backwards. That, in one sentence, is Australia’s problem. Our challenge is not a lack of talent or opportunity; it is that government has become too big, too expensive and too intrusive. A Coalition Government will reverse that, restore discipline to the Budget and implement a cap on tax as a share of the economy.

Backing enterprise

The question is whether Australia can once again become the best place in the world to invest, build, innovate and create jobs. I believe we can, but only if we get back to first principles and back Australians prepared to work hard, invest and take risks.

Every dollar government spends first has to be earned by somebody running a business, employing Australians or taking a risk. Without a strong private sector, there are no taxes to pay for hospitals, schools or defence. When governments destroy incentives for business, they destroy the capacity to fund those essential services.

Fairer tax settings

Let us start with tax. When wages rise simply to keep up with inflation, people are no better off and should not pay higher taxes as though they are. A Coalition Government will index income-tax thresholds to inflation so Australians can keep more of what they earn, rather than paying higher tax simply because prices have gone up.

The same applies to investment, which creates jobs, builds homes and drives productivity. When government taxes investment heavily, it discourages prosperity. That is why we will abolish Labor’s capital gains tax on investment and restore negative gearing, policies Labor promised more than 50 times not to touch. Labor’s own Budget papers concede those taxes will reduce housing supply by 35,000 homes over the decade. In the middle of a housing crisis, that is sheer madness.

Building more homes

Housing is now a business issue. Employers cannot recruit because workers cannot find somewhere to live. Housing shortages have become labour shortages, delaying projects across the economy.

Australia’s housing crisis is a supply crisis: we are simply not building enough homes. Under the Coalition, Australia built around 200,000 homes a year. Under Labor, that has fallen to around 170,000 at a time of rising immigration. The answer is not more taxes. It is simpler laws, faster approvals and a smaller, more effective government.

The National Construction Code is more than 2,000 pages long; it should be closer to 200. Environmental laws are being weaponised by activists to stop nation-building projects, and the Coalition will defund the Environmental Defenders Office. The Corporations Act, Tax Acts and Competition Act have also become a compliance nightmare for businesses large and small.

That means less red tape and easier compliance, whether an Australian is building a home, a hospital or a mine.

Getting migration right

Building more homes also means getting migration right. Businesses depend on attracting talent when it cannot be found locally, but migration works only when government gets the settings right. Labor has not.

Over the past four years, Australia has taken in around 1.4 million new arrivals, roughly the population of Adelaide, without building the homes, roads, schools and hospitals to support that growth. With a housing crisis on our hands, this Government has brought in more advertising professionals than carpenters. The result is no surprise: higher rents, overstretched infrastructure and too many young Australians locked out of home ownership.

You cannot bring in more people than houses you build. That is our policy, and we will overhaul the skilled migration program so Australia brings in people with the skills businesses desperately need.

Affordable, reliable energy

Energy demands the same long-term thinking. Reliable, affordable energy is not just an environmental issue; it is one of Australia’s greatest competitive advantages. When energy becomes expensive, investment leaves, businesses become less competitive and jobs are put at risk. That is exactly what has happened under Labor.

Electricity prices have risen by around 40 per cent. Households have paid an estimated $23 billion more for power, while almost a quarter of a million have needed hardship or payment assistance.

Businesses face energy costs their international competitors simply do not. Australia is blessed with abundant coal, gas and uranium. Those resources should be among our greatest competitive advantages, yet Australian businesses are paying more for energy while the resources we export help power industries overseas. Under Labor, Australians are forced to subsidise expensive renewables, cease the use of coal and remain prohibited from using world-class uranium to generate cheaper power. Labor has turned an advantage into a competitive disadvantage.

The Coalition will change that. We will scrap Labor’s net-zero agenda, restore affordable and reliable energy and make Australia an energy superpower. We will reduce emissions where we can, but never sacrifice Australian jobs, Australian industry or our standard of living to satisfy an ideological target.

Faster approvals and investment certainty

Investors need certainty. Capital goes where it is welcome. If Australia is too slow, too expensive or too uncertain, investment will not wait, but will go somewhere else. Too many major projects spend years waiting for approvals with no certainty of a decision.

A Coalition Government will reform the EPBC Act, streamline environmental approvals, eliminate unnecessary duplication between Commonwealth and state processes and give businesses timely decisions, because decisions should actually be made. Every month a project sits on a bureaucrat’s desk is another month in which jobs are not created, exports are not produced and investment is put at risk.

A Future Generations Fund

The same principle applies to the nation’s finances. When commodity prices are strong, responsible governments do not assume the good times will last. A Coalition Government will establish a Future Generations Fund and bank 80 cents of every dollar of windfall company tax and resource-rent tax to pay down debt, invest in nation-building infrastructure and secure future prosperity.

Workplace relations that support growth

Sound finances alone are not enough. Businesses also need confidence that they can invest, employ and grow, and that means getting workplace relations right. As Minister for Industrial Relations, I believed workplace laws should protect workers without making it harder to do business.

That is why we restored the Australian Building and Construction Commission and established the Registered Organisations Commission to strengthen accountability. In 2021, prolonged industrial action at Fremantle Port threatened Western Australia’s mining, agricultural and construction sectors. I intervened because the national interest came first, and the industrial action stopped.

This Government has taken the opposite approach. Business warned Labor that its workplace laws would lead to industrial disruption in the Pilbara, but Labor dismissed those concerns. Just weeks ago, for the first time in 26 years, industrial action hit BHP’s Port Hedland operations. Every day of disruption puts up to $80 million in economic activity and almost $7 million in royalties at risk. That is the cost of getting workplace relations wrong.

Labor is not stopping there. In the last sitting week it pushed its so-called Building Cooperative Workplaces legislation through the Senate with virtually no scrutiny. The legislation allows the Government to favour businesses with union enterprise agreements when awarding Commonwealth contracts.

Victoria has already shown where this approach leads: it became captured by the CFMEU at enormous cost to taxpayers. Commonwealth contracts should be awarded on merit, not political connections, union preference or ideology. During the Senate debate, even the Greens made clear that businesses seeking Commonwealth work should have the “right” union agreement.

Australia’s future gives me reason to remain optimistic. Our greatest strength is not just the wealth beneath our soil; it is the people above it, the Australians who build businesses, create jobs, invest, innovate and take risks.

Australia does not need to reinvent itself. It needs a government that rewards effort, backs enterprise and understands that wealth must first be created before it can be redistributed.

At the next election, Australians will face a clear choice: more taxes, more regulation, more government and more union power, or a Coalition Government that backs aspiration, backs business and gets out of the way. We have released Our Plan to Fix the Economy and Protect Our Way of Life.

When Australians are free to build businesses, create jobs, invest and take risks, Australia succeeds. That is what we believe. That is the future we are fighting for.