Addressing skills shortages is the government's key budget focus to assist business, with tax stings in store for some multinationals, cash-in-hand businesses and off-market share buybacks.
The government's focus is firmly on improving female workforce participation with its election policy to increase childcare subsidies for families earning less than $530,000 a year now formally budgeted.
The policy comes at an ongoing cost of at least $1.7 billion a year, but Treasurer Jim Chalmers says it returns an economic dividend.
"Cheaper child care is a game-changing investment in families, our workforce, and our economy," he argued early in his budget speech.
"It will increase the paid hours worked by women with young children by up to 1.4 million hours a week in the first year alone. That's the equivalent of 37,000 extra full-time workers."
Higher childcare subsidies are paired with the previously announced plan to scale up the government's existing paid parental leave scheme from 20 to 26 weeks by July 2026, at an ongoing cost of around $620 million a year.
The government is also seeking to make workplaces more female-friendly by increasing funding to Working Women's Centres to provide advice to employees, as well as $1.8 million a year to support education and compliance activities to enforce a positive duty on employers to take measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation.
The government will also provide a small amount of funding (less than a million dollars per year) to support small businesses with technical advice and education to implement 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave.
Well beyond child-bearing age, the government is seeking to encourage more pensioners to enter, or stay in, the workforce by temporarily raising the amount that they can earn before having their pension reduced from $7,800 to $11,800 in the current financial year.
TAFE and skills shortages a budget priority
A centrepiece of the government's medium-term plan to address skills shortages is a significant increase in funding for vocational education.
The government has budgeted $922 million over five years from this financial year on, with most of that going towards providing 480,000 fee-free Technical and Further Education (TAFE) places during that period.
Mr Chalmers said a large proportion of those places would be front-loaded and were an outcome of the Jobs and Skills Summit.
"Providing 180,000 places next year — the first stage in our plan for nearly half a million fee-free TAFE courses for Australians — learning skills for jobs in priority areas, like the care sectors and the digital economy," he noted in his speech.
In the short term, the government's previously announced increase in the planned permanent migration intake from 160,000 to 195,000 — another outcome of the Jobs and Skills Summit — is budgeted to increase tax receipts by $935 million and payments by $487 million, a net benefit to the bottom line of nearly $450 million.
"Businesses might initially feel a little neglected by this offering, compared to the rush of sweeteners they've been used to, but there are some smart measures that will help them too," independent economist Nicki Hutley told ABC News.
"Paid parental leave and child care should increase female workforce participation and the pool of labour so desperately needed.
"There's also lots of skills initiatives, and even better connectivity for the regions which will be a key part of the journey away from fossil fuels.
"These are longer-term measures, of course. A distinct change in diet from previous budgets."
Beyond skills, the treasurer was keen to highlight the government's fund for projects across a range of industries, which does not affect the budget bottom line because it is an investment, and therefore off the balance sheet.
"Our $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund will help finance projects that expand our industrial base, diversify our economy, create sustainable, well-paid jobs, and grow our regional centres.
"In clean energy manufacturing, in medical manufacturing, in new technologies, in agriculture, in critical minerals," he said.
"So that we can be a country that makes things again. So that we can add more value to the things that we sell to the world."
The budget also flagged $275 million over six years towards the Driving the Nation Fund to invest in zero- or low-emissions transport infrastructure, along with $63 million over three years to support small and medium businesses to fund energy efficiency upgrades.
Budget stings for business
While the government has a range of measures to make more skilled workers available to businesses, the budget does expect corporate Australia to pay a price.
The much-vaunted centrepiece is a further crackdown on multinational tax avoidance.
A crackdown on large companies using related-party debts to artificially reduce their local profits and tax bills is expected to raise around $720 million in extra revenue over the next four years.
Moves to stop multinationals from transferring profits via payments for "intangible" assets held in tax havens are forecast to add a further $250 to the government's corporate tax take.
There is also an estimated $550 million to be raised over four years from a surprise move to treat off-market share buybacks the same as on-market ones.
A growing number of share market-listed companies were exploiting a tax loophole that allowed them to buy back shares off-market at a lower price by using franked dividends as a sweetener for the selling shareholders.
From 7:30pm AEDT such off-market buyback "packages" of shares and franked dividends are no longer allowed, with all proceeds from buybacks subject to capital gains tax.
However, measures to enforce the existing tax rules are expected to raise far more revenue than the tax law tweaks.
A $1.1 billion additional investment into the ATO's Tax Avoidance Taskforce, mainly targeting large multinationals, is expected to yield $2.8 billion over the next four years, while a three-year extension to the Shadow Economy Program has an even better expected return of $2.1 billion for a $685 million investment.
The Albanese government is also scrapping a measure announced in the 2021-22 budget that would have allowed taxpayers to self-assess the effective life of intangible assets, rather than them being set by law, saving a further $550 million over four years.
A measure that directly raises no revenue may prove to be one of the most significant corporate tax changes, with large multinationals, tenderers for major Australian government contracts and Australian public companies required to disclose additional information about their corporate structure and tax affairs.
A doubling of fees charged for applications under the foreign investment framework, and a doubling of penalties for breaches related to residential land, will also raise $457 million over the forward estimates.
The government has also said it will increase the maximum penalties for breaches of the competition and consumer law from $10 million to $50 million per breach or from 10 per cent of annual turnover to 30 per cent during the period when the breach took place, whichever is greater, with a forecast increase to revenue of $63 million over four years.
Meanwhile, the budget also provides for the abolition of union watchdog the Registered Organisations Commission, with its functions transferred to the Fair Work Commission.
'Treasurer has shown restraint'
Overall, Ms Hutley said the budget showed that the government was addressing the challenging economic conditions.
"This budget should instil at least some degree of confidence in businesses because it is not a government wantonly spending and exacerbating inflation and interest rate pressures, which must be key among their concerns as we head into a period of significantly slower growth next year," she concluded.
Warren Hogan, economic advisor to Judo Bank, agreed that the government was being careful not to make inflation even worse.
"The treasurer has shown restraint and allowed booming government revenues to feed into the bottom line," he told ABC News.
"The government should be commended for not making the RBA's job even harder than it already is.
"Fiscal policy has played a big role in creating the global inflation problems in the pandemic and it is fiscal policy that must play a central role in getting inflation back under control.
"If we leave it solely to monetary policy to tackle inflation there is a risk that the RBA will be forced to take interest rates to such a high level that the result could be a deep and damaging recession.
"This budget doesn't make matters worse but in no way is Australian fiscal policy acting to restrain the economy and help reign in inflation."
