Ask most people what is hurting business in 2026 and they will point to interest rates, or petrol, or wages. Bouris says the heavier drag sits somewhere else and rarely reaches the front page.
It’s actually the creeping cost of compliance. In his own financial services business, for example, Bouris explained on the Switzer Show that his compliance department is now twice the size of his marketing department, in headcount and in dollars. Compliance staff have become some of the most expensive people in the market, he says, because there are not enough of them and the banks and aggregators are all chasing the same pool.
He explained that a business like his either lifts its margin to hold position or makes less money. “And I don’t like the second one,” he said.
It does not stop at financial services. Bouris points to the coffee shop outside his office and the rules it wrestles with just to put tables on the footpath: how close to the curb it can go, where the bike racks and bins sit, how the council signs off. Those on-costs flow through to the customer.
He draws a line between public servants, who he says are “really good,” and the bureaucracy that sits between them and the politicians voters actually elect. Bouris argues bureaucrats build regulation to justify their positions, layer grows on layer, and the bigger government gets, the less productive the country becomes.
That lands close to where the Reserve Bank has been pushing.
In her 28 July address, governor Michele Bullock said that with weak productivity growth “the economy can’t grow strongly without putting pressure on inflation,” calling it a fundamental challenge for the next few years.
Bouris puts it plainly: you cannot control inflation without productivity, and productivity is set by politicians and policy, not the central bank.
The cost is turning up in company failures. Corporate insolvencies hit a record in 2024-25, when 14,722 businesses entered external administration for the first time, up about a third on the year before. 2025-26 held just below that, the second-highest on record, with New South Wales and Victoria carrying the largest shares and construction the hardest hit.
Bouris says failures are “out of control,” and singles out New South Wales and Victoria.
“Unless we get more people into business, or able to stay in business,” he said, “our productivity number keeps going backwards.”
Watch the interview:
