Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

FREELANDER () (): I'm very proud to be a member of the Albanese Labor government. They say that changing the government changes the country, and I think this budget was definitely evidence for that. Tax cuts, road and transport funding, placement payments for nurses and for teachers, and HECS debt write-offs are just some of the big wins for the country and for Macarthur residents in particular. From 1 July, our reformed tax policy will provide larger and fairer tax cuts to more Australian households, meaning that virtually every taxpayer will get more back from their tax return. Under our federal government, those earning from $40,000 a year will receive a tax cut, as opposed to the coalition's plan, which had no tax cut for the same income bracket. Your return increases with salary, so you'll be better off under our policy and you'll get much more back in the next tax year than you would have under the previous government. This means that you get more of your money back into your pocket to help with your financial needs.

We're very much aware that there is a cost-of-living problem around the developed world. Our government is providing much-needed investment and support and helping people struggling with an economy that is under stress. We're getting inflation under control, and we're getting things done for our communities. In my community of Macarthur, we're getting funding for an upgrade to Appin Road from Appin to the Mount Gilead Estate and for the St Johns Road intersection on Appin Road, and further funding is planned in the future as we develop the new communities to the south of Appin. We're getting money for the south-west rail project, a scoping study to make the business case to extend the Western Sydney Airport rail link from the city of Bradfield to Leppington in my electorate of Macarthur. We're getting the rapid Sydney bus infrastructure upgrade of over $100 million and the Spring Farm parkway, connecting parts of my electorate from Camden to Campbelltown and Menangle across the M5 motorway. These announcements will make a huge difference to Macarthur residents, and they are a really great thing for the electorate. I'm very excited about them.

In addition to these important supports, we've announced that university students studying degrees in teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work will receive placement payments, as I said. I'm hoping that will extend also at some stage to medical students. The new payments will provide around 68,000 eligible higher education students and over 5,000 VET students each year with just over $300 per week during their clinical and professional placements. This will be means tested and available from 1 July 2025 and will be in addition to any income support the student may also receive. Further, we've announced that our federal government will cut student debt for more than 3 million Australians backdated to 1 July last year, and 23,500 Macarthur apprentices, students and trainees will benefit from this. This will help those with HECS debts. I know that in many families this is a big problem. It will reduce their HECS debts and reduce the increases in HECS debts that people have every year. Many people around the country will benefit from this.

I strongly welcome these measures, and I know that whilst there's much more to do—especially when it comes to dealing with cost-of-living pressures—these are practical, important steps to handle these pressures while also tackling inflation and global problems. In terms of the other cost-of-living measures, there's the energy bill relief of $300 to every household. There's the rent assistance payments, the cheaper medicines policy, and in health we're doing what we can to improve access to primary care.

It's long been a concern of mine that access to good quality primary care through GPs in Australia has been deteriorating in many areas. It's particularly so in disadvantaged areas and in rural, regional and remote areas. Our GP workforce is ageing, and it's particularly so in the country and the bush. In some places—like in the Deputy Speaker's area of Tasmania—there have been huge problems with access to affordable general practices. Our bulk-billing incentives announced at the last budget and the measures in this budget for increased practice incentives, increased payments for long consultations and case conferencing with other health professionals—such as allied health practitioners like podiatrists, diabetes educators and community nurses for someone with diabetes—will enable people, often with chronic multisystem illness, to access primary care. They will be bulk billed and able to access the type of health care that they need rather than going from place to place.

We are very keen to improve access to primary care in rural areas. That's why there are rural practice incentives, and there are incentives for medical students to enter into rural training schemes by increasing the number of rural placements in universities—particularly with what was recently announced in the Northern Territory with their own clinical school. This will encourage people who attend those rural and regional training schemes to become doctors. They are much more likely to stay in rural and regional areas than if they are trained in city medical schools. So that's a great thing.

We're also making medicines much cheaper, with the freezing of the copayment for medicines for four years for those on healthcare cards and for two years for those who are paying privately. This will make a difference together with our 60-day prescribing that we introduced earlier this year. It will make medicines much cheaper, particularly for older people, people on welfare payments and people with chronic illness. A very important part of our health infrastructure will be much cheaper for people to access with pharmacies et cetera. Our national immunisation programs have increased, with better access now to vaccines such as those for shingles and the recently available Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccine. They are all federally funded and available through pharmacies and general practitioners.

We're investing in a future made in Australia. That has very important implications for the health system by encouraging local manufacturing of high-tech medical products and other products that provide good, well-paying jobs in the longer term for Australians. We've had many successes in Australia in the health field, but we've also had many losses to overseas manufacturing, such as the Gardasil vaccine for cervical cancer. But we've had many successes, like Cochlear and ResMed, and we need to build on that by using our Future Made in Australia funding to improve access for startup medical companies to manufacture in Australia. There are also now lots of supports for pharmaceutical manufacturing in Australia. As we speak, the multinational company Moderna is building a messenger RNA, or mRNA, production facility in Melbourne for things like mRNA vaccines and biological products.

So there are really important things happening in medicine, and our government, through the health team led by Mark Butler, is doing really great things to try and make sure that people can access health care on an affordable and equitable basis wherever they live in Australia, after 10 years of complete neglect by the coalition government. We've had more interest in trying to reverse the trend of pressure on our public hospital outpatient system and emergency departments with the development of the urgent-care centres, and these are now becoming more accessible in all parts of Australia. In my own electorate of Macarthur we have the Macarthur urgent care centre, funded by the federal government, and we've got the urgent-care centre funded by the state government in Gregory Hills, which is making a big difference and taking a lot of pressure off our hospital system, and I'm very grateful for that.

On the terrible instances of violence against women, we're making much more progress through our initiatives to provide victim support funding and to make sure that people are able to leave violent situations by increasing the grants available to them to $5,000. There's much more to be done. I know that, and it is a blight on our society that we have violence against women occurring on a regular basis in all areas of Australia and that many women are losing their lives every year due to this. The government is working hard to look at what available solutions there are. It is something that governments of all persuasions in Australia are supporting, and I know the Attorney-General is very keen to see if there are supports that can be put in place through the legal system to make it more responsive to the needs of women in violent situations.

We are managing our economy responsibly. We're doing many things for people who suffer from disadvantage, and this is something that Labor governments have traditionally done. I'm particularly proud of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The recent announcement of a new specialist disability employment program will make a huge difference to many of the patients I've looked after in my electorate of Macarthur and even in the wider community. We've committed an additional sum of almost $230 million to this, and that'll make people with disability more able to access jobs, and that makes a huge difference. I was recently in the restaurant at the Campbelltown Catholic Club, and I was served by a patient of mine with Down syndrome who, through our disability employment system, has been able to secure a full-time job working in hospitality in the club. They have been very supportive of disability employment in Macarthur, and this will make it easier for them to employ people with even moderately severe disabilities.

We're investing in a modern digital program to deliver better supports to people in the NDIS, and that has revolutionised the lives of not only people with disabilities but their families in Macarthur. It is very important that we focus on the NDIS and its support for people with disabilities and their families. We need to bring costs under control, and the minister is certainly doing that. But we are also focused on the fact that this has revolutionised the lives of such a large number of people with disability in our communities. It means that families know that their children and other family members with disabilities have certainty into the future on things like housing, employment and support as they grow older. We are rationalising NDIS funding, and it's important that we use an evidence base to rationalise the funding for supports with disability so that those with the most severe disabilities can be guaranteed ongoing supports in our community. We are also increasing efforts to address tax compliance in the shadow economy, in particular with that multinational tax avoidance, which will improve tax takes and the pool of spending that we can use in this country.

So I'm very excited about the budget. It's made a big difference to Macarthur residents, particularly in areas like the tax cuts, in education supports and in the wider community. I know there is much more to be done. There is certainly much more to be done in health, and access to primary care is a really important part of that. There are also improvements that will need to be made in providing supports for people who are falling outside safety nets in terms of housing policy. The government has committed $32 billion for that, and it will make a difference, but it takes time. We can't redress the 10 years of failed coalition policy in housing in one or two budgets. This will take a long time. But we will do it, and it can be done. I'm proud to be a member of a government that has delivered a really wonderful budget that will make a big difference to the future of Australia.

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