Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Budget week has just passed—and this will upset the member for Fisher—and what a great budget it was for the electorate of Hunter. We are delivering serious reform and real relief for those who need it. We know that people are doing it tough. Make no mistake, this budget will make a real impact for the better for this group of people and for the whole of Australia. We are a government that cares about people. If those opposite want to talk about failing to take action to ease the cost-of-living pressures for families, let's talk about the fact that their vocabulary relies and really only expands no wider than the word 'no', because that's all they say whenever we put forward policies that will help the exact people who they wrongly claim we are letting down.

We all know who is failing people and Australian families in this place, and that's those on the other side of this chamber. Pretending to care to win a vote does nothing for those doing it tough. In fact, it seems pretty desperate if you ask me. I will give those opposite the benefit of the doubt. I'm not sure if it's short-term memory loss or selective hearing. For their benefit, let me remind them of the measures this government has made to take real action on reducing inflation and the pressures on Australian families and businesses. I know taking real action is a foreign concept to those opposite, because they rarely did it in this place in the last 10 years that they spent government, but listen up; you guys might just learn something.

The very centrepiece of our budget that was announced just a few weeks ago was a $14.6 billion cost-of-living package which is expected to directly reduce inflation by three-quarters of a percentage point in 2023 and 2024. The list goes on and on and on. I won't name everything we're doing, because I only have five minutes, but I will mention a few things. We're delivering cheaper child care, fee-free TAFE for more than 300,000 Australians, and more university positions. We're expanding paid parental leave so parents can raise their newborns without having to worry about their bank accounts. We are building more affordable homes so that Australians will actually be able to afford to put a roof over their heads. We successfully fought for a wage increase for minimum wage and award wage workers, and we're funding pay rises for aged-care workers so that hardworking Australian families have more money in their pockets to deal with the pressures they're facing.

We're delivering the biggest increase to the bulk billing incentive since its introduction by a Labor government. The number in your bank account should not determine whether you can access high-quality health care. I know those opposite tried their best to make Australians choose between being able to afford to look after their health and other necessities within their nine years of cuts and neglect of Medicare, but we will not stand for that, because they did not do any of that. We have made life easier for more than 89,000 people in my electorate and millions more around Australia who can now visit their doctors and have their doctor visit bulk billed. That sounds like taking real action to reduce pressures on Australian families to me. It does not stop there. We are making medicines cheaper for almost 50,000 people in the Hunter alone, saving Australians up to $180 each and every year so they can continue to get the medicine they need without it having to come at the expense of something else.

We know that one of the biggest pressures on Australian families and businesses is their power bills. Those opposite must have forgotten that five million eligible households and one million eligible small businesses will be able to access electricity bill relief through the Energy Bill Relief Fund. As a result, power bill increases will be 25 percentage points lower and retail gas price increases around 16 percentage points smaller because of the real action this government has taken. This is the final nail in the coffin of the arguments made by those opposite. If they didn't consider this to be real action, then I don't know what real action is.

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