War is big business, but what about Perth’s small businesses?

October 6, 2026 — 12:14pm

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As a business owner, I get served a lot of small business content through social media algorithms.

This past week there was such a deluge of stories describing how small businesses are being strangled to operational death by an increasing tangle of costs, rules, and regulations – all imposed by a government that concurrently raves about cutting red tape for giant corporations to make it easier for them to do business in this country.

Many small business owners have commented how Australia no longer feels like the Lucky Country.

By contrast, the gung-ho “Australia is open for business” rhetoric coming from the major parties can be noted in relation to the following, to take just a few examples:

New data centres – yes, we’re happy to open new fossil fuel projects to service their enormous energy needs;

AI large language models – yes, you can help yourself to Australian artists’ creative material… and check out Medicare while you’re at it;

And various defence-adjacent operations – yes, you may extract the minerals in the soils beneath our precious Northern Jarrah forests to build weapons of war.

To be clear, most Australians would quite like to keep our jarrah forests standing, get a fair deal for our........

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