Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's with great pleasure that I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2024-25, to support the passage of the bill and to speak about the positive impacts of the budget and the government's overarching economic strategy for people in my electorate and indeed for the nation more broadly.

I want to open with a couple of observations on the broader economic context that we find ourselves in, because that, of course, is always critical to the framing of a budget. That broader economic context is that we're coming out of a couple of years in which we have seen a global inflation surge. That inflation surge was caused by a number of factors, primarily international factors, such as the war in Ukraine and the impact that has had on energy prices, but also global supply chain factors coming out of the post-COVID international economic environment. That led to inflation rising, even before this government came to power. It's been a period in which Australia, like all advanced economies, has seen inflation rise.

It's been absolutely critical that the central bank, the RBA, and the government put in place economic strategies to put downward pressure on inflation, because inflation is an economic phenomenon that eats away at people's standard of living. Inflation is an economic phenomenon that affects those who are most vulnerable. So it has been the centrepiece of this government's economic strategy over its first three budgets to put downward pressure on inflation and specifically to bring inflation within the two to three per cent band. A great deal has been achieved. If you look at the monthly CPI, it was over eight per cent in late 2022, and it has come down substantially. It now has a three in front of it. So, at a monthly read, it has come down by more than half. In quarterly terms, it has also come down by around half. So that's significant.

We're not quite there yet. We need to get inflation within the two to three per cent band. Specifically, we now have a target of 2.5 per cent. We're not quite there yet, and inflation tends to be trickier the closer you get to the target band—the closer you get to the ultimate target. That's something we're seeing in a number of economies around the world, including the US.

Yet, even though we have a little bit of work to do on inflation, it is critical that people continue to receive assistance with cost-of-living pain, because we know that people are still doing it tough. But what it means is that we have to have cost-of-living assistance that is targeted, proportionate and well calibrated, and that's exactly what we see in this budget. We see cost-of-living assistance that will be aligned with and support monetary policy and that will help this country see inflation continue to come down over the next 12 to 24 months to where it needs to get to.

I want to talk about particular groups in my electorate—and, of course, these groups exist nationally—that will benefit from the cost-of-living measures in this budget. One of them is young people. My electorate is an electorate with many young people—38 per cent of my electorate is aged under 30—and I want to talk about the fact that there are a number of measures in this budget that will directly benefit people in that cohort.

I talk to people in the community and I receive correspondence and emails, and I know that one measure that has resonated in my electorate and been very meaningful to people is student debt relief. HECS, from now on, will be calculated in a way where, instead of being based solely on CPI, it will be indexed based on the wage price index or CPI—whichever is the lower amount. This will take a lot of the edge off the indexation of HECS debt and is a very important measure. This will prevent increases of the type that we saw last year, when CPI was over seven per cent. This measure will be backdated to June 2023. What was particularly meaningful for me is that this measure alone will benefit over 25,000 people in Fraser. This is a very significant measure that will not remove but reduce the impact of a particular barrier to participation in higher education for those in more vulnerable situations. So that's a very significant measure, which, as I said, I've talked to many people in my electorate about and which resonates with them.

Another one is prac payments: $319 a week for students during their placement studying important courses like nursing, teaching and social work. Unpaid placements, again, can be a particular barrier for those who want to follow particular career paths. We know that nursing, teaching and social work are careers that underpin our care economy and are particularly important for supporting many people in our society by providing critical social services. These prac payments will provide an incredibly important support for people looking to undertake these careers and will help us to boost numbers looking to undertake these careers. Health care and social assistance is, by employment, the largest industry in my electorate. It employs something in the order of 13 per cent of the labour force in Fraser. So these prac payments are going to make a big difference in encouraging more people to move into the vitally important sectors.

The next thing that I want to talk about is fee-free TAFE and also training and the skills side of our economy more generally. When we talk about skills, apprenticeships and TAFE, we talk about individual stories, about giving people opportunities, about giving people the beginning of their careers and about people on the first rung of the ladder of opportunity. But we are also talking, at a macro level, about fixing up many of the supply-side blockages of our economy. This is an instance where we're talking both about the individual and giving people opportunities and about macroeconomic reform where we are fixing up supply-side blockages in a way that will put downward pressure on inflation and also put our economy in the position that it needs to be in in the longer run by developing the industries of the future.

The Albanese Labor government is investing $90.6 million to boost the number of skilled workers in the construction and housing sectors. These are really important careers that have very long-term futures, but, as I said, they are also critical to the supply-side challenges in our economy. We know that housing affordability is a key economic and social challenge for our economy. It is vitally important that we bring more people into the supply side of the housing sector. We're also seeing 20,000 additional fee-free TAFE and VET places for skilled construction and housing workers, to create secure and well-paid jobs that will help us to reach our housing targets.

More generally, we are seeing hundreds of thousands of fee-free TAFE places across a wide range of sectors. This is critical to young people in my electorate. As I said, it will give them the first step on the ladder. It will give them, often, their first opportunity in the workforce. It will also fix a lot of the broader supply-side challenges our economy is facing.

We're also doing a great deal to support more people going into apprenticeships. We're increasing both the payments that go to individuals and the payments that go to employers. I was recently at an event on behalf of the Minister for Skills and Training, Brendan O'Connor. It was at a provider, MEGT, in my electorate. MEGT were celebrating their 700,000th apprentice—a remarkable achievement. But what we see is: the government's work in partnering with organisations like that and providing opportunities for young people to undertake apprenticeships is absolutely critical. It's absolutely critical for those individuals to get opportunities, but it is also critical for our broader economy.

Finally, there are the tax cuts, which will benefit every taxpayer in our economy but, disproportionately, will benefit young taxpayers—in particular, those who are in that $18,000 to $45,000 earning bracket, who would have received absolutely nothing under the previously calibrated tax cuts put forward by the previous government, but will now receive over $800 a year under the new, amended, stage 3 tax cuts. On average, taxpayers in Fraser will receive $1,500 in tax cuts, but it's that young cohort in particular who will benefit more from the tax cuts as recalibrated in the budget.

I also want to talk about this. In the budget there are the benefits for young people. There are also the benefits for the vulnerable, in all sorts of different ways. I think this is another critical aspect that's worth focusing on, because the responsible, targeted and well-calibrated assistance measures contained in the budget are really critical to providing assistance to those who need it, in a responsible way.

One example is Commonwealth rental assistance. We are seeing a further 10 per cent increase to Commonwealth rental assistance, which builds on the 15 per cent increase last year. This is the first time in a long time that we have seen increases in successive budgets, and we know that this is an area where people are really feeling the pinch. So this is critical for people in my electorate.

There's also the energy rebate. That will obviously benefit young people, the cohort I just talked about, but will also benefit people who are vulnerable, people on low incomes and people who are feeling the pinch more generally. A $300 rebate will particularly benefit those on benefits and on low incomes. Also, though, it's being provided as a subsidy—in a way that will put downward pressure on prices.

Another aspect that I want to talk about is cheaper medicines. Pensioners will have the PBS cost of $7.70 frozen until July 2029. We are adding more medicines to the PBS. Residents in Fraser have already saved over $1.8 million from cheaper medicines because of our 60-day scripts. This measure is making a real difference to people. And that money is very significant for those on benefits and on low incomes. It's a very significant measure.

I just want to finish off by saying that this is all being achieved in the context of a government that is providing cost-of-living assistance but doing so in a budget that has been crafted in a very responsible way because we want to make sure that fiscal policy and monetary policy are aligned. We've now seen the budget be brought into surplus for the second year in a row, a very significant achievement. It's been a long time since the federal government has achieved that. There is a $9.3 billion surplus forecast for 2023-24, the first time consecutive surpluses have been achieved in almost two decades.

It's really critical to point out that this is being achieved through a very significant shift in the fiscal position relative to where it was when we inherited government. The budget position is forecast to improve by a massive $215 billion over the six years to 2027-28 compared to where it would have been on the fiscal position that we inherited. You just need to look at the position last year, with a $20 billion surplus, relative to tens of billions of dollars of deficit.

This is being achieved by banking a very high proportion of the fiscal uplift that we've seen, and that fiscal uplift is being achieved largely through healthier workforce numbers, through higher participation rates, through lower unemployment and through higher wage numbers. To some degree, it's also due to higher resources prices, but most of that fiscal uplift is due to a stronger labour market. We are banking a very high proportion of that. Critically, we're banking a much higher proportion of that fiscal uplift than those opposite did when they were in government and, indeed, than the Howard government did when it was in office. This is putting downward pressure on inflation right now because our fiscal position is stronger with consecutive surpluses. It also means that the debt bill is tens of billions of dollars less over the upcoming decade because we're banking that fiscal uplift.

So we're seeing fiscal and monetary policy working hand in hand, and this is being reinforced. In testimony that the House Standing Committee on Economics, the committee that I chair, received from the RBA, they reinforced the fact that fiscal and monetary policy are working together. We don't see this in every advanced economy. This is not something to be taken for granted. This is something that actually requires hard work. It requires finding savings. It requires banking the fiscal uplift. These are not decisions that are automatic. In fact, these are decisions that didn't happen under the previous government. In the previous government's final budget, zero dollars in savings were identified. Under this government, there have been tens of billions.

The fiscal position is not something that just happens automatically. It takes hard work. It takes tough decisions. For me, as a representative of an electorate where there are many vulnerable people—many people on low incomes, many people on benefits and many young people—the fact that we've been able to achieve this while also providing those cohorts with support is incredibly important. That's why I'm so pleased to support this budget. It's a budget which not only provides support but is fiscally responsible.

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