Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In this inflationary environment, people are hurting. I'd like to pull the veil back as to what's actually going on in my patch. In Higgins, renters are leaving the electorate. I have entire families who are moving homes because they simply can't make the rent. I've got mortgage holders who purchased beautiful homes in beautiful tree-lined streets at a time when the RBA told them that interest rates would be flat for the foreseeable future, and they are now at their limit with respect to mortgage repayments.

I've also got a group of people who are sleeping in their cars in public spaces. This is happening not because they don't have jobs. They do have jobs; they just can't make the rent. And disturbingly, we are seeing a spike in domestic violence in our maternal and child health centre presentations. Women are presenting with features of coercive control and, if you join the dots, you would think that this may be due to pressure on household budgets and certainly financial stress. So if this is happening in Higgins, imagine how much worse it is elsewhere.

Inflation is public enemy No. 1, and Australia's not immune to the inflationary pressures that have been sweeping the world. Except in our case, inflation is now moderating. It was around six per cent when we came to government. It peaked at around eight per cent in December 2022. It's now currently trending at about four per cent. So it is coming down, but it is still much too high and people are hurting.

As a result we had to make the difficult choice to rejig the tax cuts. We did this because of persistent and sustained pressure on household budgets. People have run down their reserves and we had to make a decision. This was not a decision that was made lightly. It was done with a lot of consideration—I'm sure there were some pretty robust discussions around the cabinet table—but it is the right decision. It is the right decision because despite throwing a bunch of medicines at this problem, it is proving to be much stickier and much more stubborn than we anticipated.

And the medicine we threw at this included cheaper child care, free TAFE courses, urgent care clinics. We have an excellent bulk-billed urgent care clinic in Prahran, just up the road from where I used to work at the Alfred. The clinic offers bulk-billed care on a walk-in basis, no appointments needed. You can have your diagnostic tests, whether its X-rays or pathology, at the Alfred across the road. Your results are then given to you within a couple of days. With the electronic systems speaking to each other, it's absolutely seamless. When I visited, I found at least 20 patients a day are being diverted from the Alfred's emergency department to this urgent care clinic, so it's already easing the pressure on our busy emergency departments.

We also boosted bulk-billing. In fact, we're trying to arrest its collapse by tripling our bulk-billing incentive. We've found that we've actually increased bulk-billing by 2.1 per cent—that's 360,000 extra presentations that have been fully bulk-billed since we brought in this legislation. Not only that, but we're also trying to repair the safety net. We boosted Commonwealth rent assistance by 15 per cent—the highest increase in 30 years—and I've helped constituents in my patch with this.

But the tax cuts are going to be a real game changer. Why? Because it is a broad based solution which is going to sweep over every single taxpayer, every one of the 13.6 million taxpayers. Everyone is going to get a tax cut. In Higgins that will equate to 85,000 taxpayers. In fact, three in four taxpayers will be getting a bigger tax cut under us compared to the previous Morrison regime.

Who are these people? These people include women. Ninety per cent of women are going to be getting a tax cut. That is a game changer, particularly at a time when productivity has been moribund for the last six years. And when we talk about productivity, what could be a bigger shot in the arm than injecting a whole bunch of skilled workers into the economy at a time when businesses are desperate for skilled workers? Those women are currently languishing at home, having made a decision to not increase their hours. We know from Treasury analysis that these tax cuts will in fact boost labour supply by a whopping 930,000 hours per week. That's double the old Morrison regime.

Young people are also the big winners in this. We have 1.5 million young people aged 18 to 24 and most of them—in fact, all of them—will be getting a tax cut of just over $1,000. This is the intergenerational dividend that we've been calling for and that we are now delivering. But there is more to do, and we are absolutely committed to delivering that for the Australian people.

See this speech in context