Labor’s ‘Big Government’ dream is coming to fruition with nearly half the country now relying on public sector jobs, welfare, pensions, and government contracts. This trend will only worsen, with 82% of new jobs created in the past two years being taxpayer funded – a dramatic reversal from over 75% of new jobs being private sector jobs during the Coalition’s last term.
Having a low unemployment rate is a good thing, but it doesn’t take a PhD in economics to understand that tax-payer funded jobs are not the answer for the long term.
The Treasurer likes to point to manufactured statistics like this to claim the economy is “strong.” But Australians living in the real economy know better. Prices are still high, wages are flat, and small businesses are closing their doors at record rates across the country.
In the year to June 2025, real wages grew by just 0.3 per cent – with most of that again coming from public sector pay rises. Meanwhile, private sector wages are still going backwards in real terms by not keeping pace with inflation.
The warning signs are flashing red. Productivity is going backwards, with output per person falling over the past year and long‑term growth near historic lows. Small business – the engine room of the economy – is on the brink, with insolvencies up 57 per cent in just 12 months.
The solution isn’t more spin or more government. It’s getting the economic fundamentals right. We need to create the conditions for private-sector led growth – not fake, government-funded sugar hits.
That starts with productivity, something the Treasurer now says he wants to fix. I hope he means it. But he didn’t mention it before the election, and it sounds more like political damage control because Labor knows who voters will blame if the economy doesn’t get moving.
We’ve already seen Labor’s idea of a productivity plan. It’s called ‘Future Made in Australia’ – a multi-billion-dollar ad campaign dressed up as a policy. There’s nothing productive or visionary about it. It’s just old-school Labor, where politicians and bureaucrats pick the winners, and taxpayers pick up the bill.
What if, instead of another scheme, the Government just stopped making things harder? What if it paused the relentless red tape, got out of the way of business, and let the private sector lead on jobs and innovation?
We are becoming an economy built around government. Right now, too many businesses spend more time managing government compliance than serving their customers. Innovation has taken a back seat to box-ticking.
This model can’t last. Even Treasury has warned that current levels of government spending are unsustainable. You can’t run a household by spending more than you take home, and it’s no different for government. Money doesn’t come from nowhere. If they keep spending this way taxes will go up or inflation will rise. We’re already seeing this start with Labor’s new tax on unrealised gains in super.
Of course, government workers – especially in health, education, and our emergency services – play critical roles. But their work ultimately depends on a strong, productive private sector that can fund it all.
Labor has forgotten where Australia’s prosperity comes from. The Coalition hasn’t.
Australia’s prosperity has always come from the hard work of entrepreneurs, innovators, small businesses, and individual workers who get up every day and get on with the job – not from the hand of government.
The Coalition will back those who take risks, reward effort and investment, and clear the path for the private sector to thrive. That is the only way to truly lift wages, ease cost‑of‑living pressures, and build lasting prosperity.
