Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

something that my colleague well and truly supports. The Rudd Labor government has come to office with a strong understanding of the pressure that working families and those on low incomes are under. There are significant pressures facing Australian families today, and the Rudd Labor government takes the task of relieving these pressures very seriously.

In opposition, I chaired a task force which examined the challenges and problems of families in Australia. It was called Family Watch. In the process of producing the report, we spoke to over 5,000 families from all across the country. We heard numerous accounts of how Australian families were not always seeing the prosperity the Howard government claimed. We heard that inflation and interest rates were biting hard on working families and about concerns about housing affordability and the cost of providing health and particularly dental care for their children. We heard how the general rises in prices of things like petrol and groceries were squeezing the household budget more and more every month.

When we handed down that report, it was widely publicised. I was really interested at the time to hear the Howard government’s reaction. We did not hold hearings. Basically, I took the members of the committee into shopping centres right the way around the country and we conducted surveys. I thought the Howard government may actually be interested in what the 5,000 families from across mostly outer metropolitan and regional areas had to say. But the Howard government’s response to the Family Watch report and the concerns that were expressed in it was for John Howard to say in parliament—and the quote has now become famous:

Working families in Australia have never been better off.

We were all pretty amazed at that statement, particularly those who participated in the Family Watch task force. The Leader of the Opposition’s concern for working families is, in my view, an absolute farce. When these issues were raised with them in government, they just brushed them off. Now that they have been voted out, they realise that they actually misread what was happening to families and they are now trying to play political catch-up.

The Rudd Labor government is not playing catch-up; it is actually out there, delivering for working families. I was very pleased to hear in the budget last night of part of the $55 billion Working Families Support Package, a very, very important commitment to honouring our promise to help families through these difficult times. One of the first measures introduced in the budget last night was the $47 billion in tax cuts. These tax cuts are aimed squarely at low- and middle-income earners, people who may be struggling to balance the family budget. These are the people who need the help that these tax cuts provide to manage their growing grocery, petrol and mortgage bills. Child care is another large cost for families, and I am very pleased to support the government’s increase in the childcare rebate from 30 to 50 per cent. I understand how important affordable child care is to ensuring that the workplace retains some of its most valued members. Increasing workplace participation is good policy for the economy and it is also good for working families. Child care plays a very important role in ensuring that working parents can continue to be engaged in paid employment.

The economy is also facing a skills crisis. Many of those skills can be found amongst those parents who are currently not able to participate in the workforce because of the lack of availability of and a lack of access to child care. By providing more affordable child care, the Rudd Labor government has given parents back the choice to re-enter the workforce when they want to, on their terms—a real choice, not one that is imposed upon them. Another cost that families were concerned about when we went and spoke to them in the supermarkets and shopping centres around the country was the cost of education. I am very pleased to be part of a government which takes seriously the challenge of education in a digital world. For this reason, I am glad to support the new education tax refund, which will allow parents to recoup some of the inevitable costs of educating a child for today’s world. Education today requires great knowledge of computers, and children who do not have access to these resources lag badly behind their counterparts who do. Access to information and communications technology must become a fundamental right for every Australian student and, with the education tax refund as well as the National Secondary School Computer Fund, the Rudd government is moving to make that right a reality.

Some of the more pressing concerns that families had also, as I found when I toured around the country with Family Watch, were the prices of groceries and petrol, and the Rudd government are acting here as well. We have given powers to the ACCC to enforce the Trade Practices Act, and the ACCC is monitoring grocery prices to ensure that they are as fair and as competitive as possible. We have also introduced, which was funded in the budget last night, the National FuelWatch Scheme, which will help consumers find the best price for petrol, enhancing competitiveness and providing the best information for consumers on which to base their decisions when purchasing petrol. These actions will help to alleviate some of the cost-of-living pressures. We are tackling housing affordability as well. The First Home Saver Account is a key initiative that will help first home buyers save more effectively and work towards that all-important deposit for a new home. We are also working to ease the crisis in rental accommodation by encouraging the building of 50,000 rental properties. These are real initiatives to help families who are suffering housing stress—and I absolutely encourage any property developers who are looking at developing new housing estates to look very seriously at the programs that the Rudd government has put in place to ensure that new developments actually incorporate affordable housing within their parameters.

The dream of owning your own home should not be unattainable. Young people leaving school and entering the workforce should be able to see a clear pathway to financial security. We must strive to create a society that opens up the path to owning a home, a society where, with hard work, anybody can own their own home. That, unfortunately, is not the case today. There are serious pockets of disadvantage and even some middle-class people cannot aspire to home ownership in some of our capital cities. We must build a society where anybody can afford a home.

In a broader sense than those specific initiatives, working families also need a return to fiscal responsibility. They need a return to responsible government which will manage the fiscal policy of the government to help maximise downward pressure on inflation and maximise downward pressure on interest rates, and that is what we delivered in the budget last night. I am very proud to be part of a Labor government that will act to protect working families in these tough economic times and that will make sure that families in Australia have the best possible chance to raise their children in a prosperous and fair society. That is the Labor way, and we saw that in the budget last night. I would again like to thank the people of Ballarat, who have given me the honour of representing them here in this place in the 42nd Parliament. Thank you.

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