Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In life, if you can budget, it makes it a lot better. If you know what you're doing when you're running a household budget, it's so much better for your family. If you're running a country and you can budget, it makes life better for the whole country.

I want to commend our Treasurer and Prime Minister because, unlike those opposite, Labor can run the books, we can run the country, we can deliver a budget surplus, we can bring down the debt and we can take up wages. What that means for the people in my part of the world in Paterson is that 75,000 hardworking people will get a tax cut on 1 July. And I tell you, when you're budgeting, every dollar counts in Australia. It also means that 87 per cent of people in Paterson will be better off under the Albanese Labor government. It means that over 260,000 people can go and get an MRI scan—and I've just busted my ACL, so I know how important they are—and be bulk-billed. It means than 10,000 people have additionally been bulk-billed in Paterson, thanks to Anthony Albanese and the Labor government.

Labor understands budgets, we understand how to make your dollar go further, we know how to run a country, we're not running it into the ground, we are working for you and making your dollars count.

See this speech in context