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

To the Leader of the Opposition let me say: I understand that families around the country feel the pressures of the world we live in and particularly the cost-of-living pressures on their shoulders. I understand that very, very keenly. That is why we want to work with families on those cost-of-living pressures and why we want to work with them to improve the services that they rely on and to improve their prospects in the future. There is nothing more important to the prospects of Australian families than keeping the economy strong and making sure that people have the benefits and dignity of work, which is why I am so pleased that we were able to manage the economy so that Australia came out of the global financial crisis stronger than any other developed country in the world and that over the next two years we will create half a million jobs.

I am also pleased that we are able to continue our work with families to assist them with cost-of-living pressures. We have of course provided tax cuts for three years. We created the education tax refund to help with the costs of getting kids to school. We have added to that in the recent budget by enabling families to recover some of the money they spend on kids' uniforms. We have worked with families to alleviate the burden of childcare fees, increasing the childcare tax rebate to 50 per cent and, in the recent budget, moving to a fortnightly payment arrangement so that people do not need to be so far out of pocket before they see some money come back from the government. We have also assisted the lowest income Australians, those eligible for the low-income tax offset, by bringing forward some of the payments that they would have otherwise not been eligible for. This move in the recent budget means that they will better see the rewards of work.

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