The negative gearing and capital gains tax changes have dominated front pages and channels since Tuesday night. It’s fair enough, as investment policy is catnip for the national conversation.
But while the whole country has been arguing about investment properties, we've barely talked about the people who actually keep this country outside of standard business hours. Nurses, aged care workers, the barista opening your favourite cafe at 5am, the restaurant manager trying to roster a Saturday night when half the team can't get childcare.
This isn’t to say that The Federal Budget didn’t leave shift workers with some genuine wins, and they deserve acknowledgement. Tax relief that puts up to $250 back in pockets, a $1,000 instant deduction meaning frontline workers don't need a shoebox of receipts to claim for uniforms and tools, and fuel excise slashed - a big deal when your shift starts before the first bus and ends after the last train.
On the other side of the coin, the permanent $20,000 instant asset write-off helps small businesses. A café can upgrade its kitchen, a pharmacy can fix its systems, a logistics operator can invest in scheduling tech that actually reduces the admin nightmare of running a 24/7 roster. The $25 billion in additional hospital funding and $3.7 billion for aged care are significant commitments too, and these are the sectors where shift work pressure is most acute, so this investment signals that the government understands the strain.
But here's where it falls apart.
The Budget still treats childcare like a nine-to-five problem. The 3 Day Guarantee and extended parental leave are good policies; for office workers. They do nothing for the paramedic on nights, the aged care worker finishing at 11 pm, or the retail manager on rotating weekends. Until childcare matches the hours the entire economy actually operates, employers in frontline sectors will keep losing experienced workers, particularly women, to a system that simply doesn't fit their lives.
Then there’s the workforce sustainability question the Budget still avoids confronting directly. The government is rightly investing billions into hospitals, aged care and essential services. But there is a major difference between funding services and funding workforce resilience. You can fund more beds, clinics and care packages, but if burnout, fatigue, absenteeism, unsafe workloads, retention challenges and workforce attrition remain unresolved, operational strain simply intensifies.
Frontline industries are not just struggling to find workers. They are struggling to keep them. That distinction matters enormously. In healthcare, hospitality and retail especially, many businesses are now operating in what feels like a permanent fatigue economy, where managers are constantly rebuilding rosters, replacing staff, onboarding inexperienced workers and filling gaps caused by burnout or turnover.
While the Budget talks heavily about productivity, there is very little direct investment into workforce management capability, scheduling innovation, operational technology adoption or manager enablement. Yet these are the areas that materially improve retention, reduce pressure on frontline teams and create more sustainable workplaces in shift-based industries. Because productivity in frontline sectors is not just driven by labour supply alone. It is driven by whether businesses can build stable, resilient and well-supported workforces capable of sustaining performance over the long term.
Australia's economy doesn't stop at 5pm. Canberra needs to stop assuming it does.
By Ciaran Hale, CTO at Deputy
