Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. I understand that there are many Australian families struggling with cost-of-living questions. I would say to the member that the government has enacted a number of policies and plans to help Australians with cost-of-living questions. We have provided tax cuts for three years in a row. We created the education tax refund to help with the cost of getting the kids to school, which is something that did not exist before this government put it in place. And of course now we will be expanding it to cover school uniforms. We moved to increase assistance for the costs of child care. They press on many working families as the second-income earner, usually the mother, seeks to return to work. To provide extra assistance with those costs we increased the childcare tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. We understand that the Australians who most struggle with utility prices are often those on fixed incomes and consequently we moved to implement a historic rise to the pension to assist pensioners who feel these cost-of-living pressures.

Of course we are committed to further measures to ease cost-of-living pressures. We want to change the circumstances for families of teenagers where the family tax benefit structure really is from an earlier age and assumes that it is quite likely that a 16-year-old is going to move into the workforce, whereas in the modern age we want 16-year-olds engaged in full-time education. So we will rectify that problem by increasing the family tax benefit to assist with the costs of teenagers.

We are also moving to implement other policies and plans that will make a difference for Australians, including for older Australians who seek to combine a partial retirement with partial work. Our plans for things like superannuation are a long-term way of assisting people with the cost of living. There is nothing more important to helping with the cost of living than certainty and security of pay and entitlements, and it is the Labor government that have brought that about through the introduction of the Fair Work Act and the eradication of Work Choices.

I understand that with these measures there are still families that feel cost-of-living pressures—I do understand that—and so we will, with determination, go about delivering our election commitments, which are there to help make a difference to cost-of-living pressures. But can I say to the member coming into this place that he should acknowledge that the government have taken these steps—for example, the increase in childcare rebate and the education tax rebate—and that these steps are more than the steps that were taken by the Howard government. The government are working in partnership with families to assist with cost-of-living pressures.

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