Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Budgets are important. Each year when they are handed down the nation waits with interest to see what's in them. They are important because they set the foundations for the future, they address the immediate needs of the nation, they lay out the government's priorities and values and, importantly, they influence medium- and long-term economic outcomes.

Let me say that stabilising the economy, ensuring that both the Australian people and Australian businesses have a stable environment in which to operate, is incredibly important in trying to secure our future. Likewise, the opposition's budget response is equally important because, as the alternative government for the nation, the budget reply spells out the priorities and values of the opposition. Labor's 2024-25 budget was responsible, fair and visionary. Importantly, right now, at a time of so much global economic uncertainty, the budget seeks to not only lower interest rates and inflation but also ensure that our employment levels continue to rise and that unemployment remains at the level it currently is.

In contrast, the opposition leader's budget response was shallow. It was filled with empty cliches, and was lacking in detail or thoughtfulness. I hear members opposite criticise the Albanese Labor government's 2024-25 budget, but I hear very, very little in the way of detailed alternative strategies for the nation. I hear the general rhetoric that we always hear, as we've just heard from the previous speaker, but I don't hear the detailed response that the Australian people need to understand just what it is that the coalition would do if they were elected at the next election. That is important because this is a country where we value our democracy, and the democracy arises because people want to know the differences between the various parties, what they stand for and what it is that they will do.

No government ever has the money to do everything that is needed, but every government has the ability and the responsibility to do the most and the best with what they've got. Global insecurity and climate change—both of which have major consequences for the nation and our world—are matters that individual governments have very limited control over, yet most of the priority matters for people across Australia, which the government seeks to respond to in the 2024-25 budget, have their origins in global insecurity or climate change. Cost-of-living expenses, which, I accept, are causing financial stress for many Australians and which the government's 2024-25 budget responds to, are largely driven by global events. Not surprisingly, cost-of-living support was a priority in Labor's 2024-25 budget with a number of direct and indirect assistance measures. The most significant of these, of course, is the Albanese government's stage 3 tax cuts with every Australian taxpayer—all 13.6 million of them—receiving a tax cut. In the Makin electorate, 90 per cent of income tax payers will get a bigger tax cut than they would have otherwise received from the coalition. Importantly, the 2.9 million taxpayers across Australia who earn between $18,000 and $45,000—and these are some of the people who are struggling the most and who would have received absolutely nothing under the coalition government—will, under Labor, receive a tax cut. This is a government that has a social conscience.

The $300 energy relief payment for every household will provide some assistance in paying energy bills around the country, as will the $325 for the one million small businesses that will be eligible for the same relief. The maximum rate of rent assistance will increase by a further 10 per cent on top of the 15 per cent increase that commenced in September last year. There will be a one-year freeze on the maximum co-payment of PBS prescriptions and a five-year freeze for pensioners and other concession card holders. We are continuing the freeze on deeming rates for a further 12 months, and I know that that will directly impact many of those in our older population. We are cutting student debt for around three million Australians, including 19,648 in the Makin electorate, and capping the HELP indexation rate to the lower of CPI or the wage price index. There will also be a new prac payment of $319.50 a week for eligible students.

There will be an additional 24,100 home-care packages. As all members who have been here for some time would know, home-care packages matter to families. They make a difference to the lives of the individual families that receive them. We know that, for pretty much the whole time during which the coalition government was in office, this was an area screaming out for more assistance. I still regularly speak to people who have been approved for a home-care package but simply can't get one because they're not available. This additional 24,000 packages will make a huge difference to meeting that need.

Of course, there is much more to the 2024-25 budget than cost-of-living relief. An additional $477 million has been allocated to extra support for Australia's 340,000 veterans, 4,860 of whom live in Makin. I want to focus on this for a moment, because I speak with the veteran community in my electorate on a regular basis. So, $220 million of that delivers funding to implement simplified and harmonised veteran compensation legislation, delivering on the first recommendation of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. It is a much needed step in responding to defence and veteran suicides. And $186 million will go towards employing another 141 staff, in addition to the 400 or 500 that have already been employed by this government, to make claims processing easier and to fix up the mess and backlog of claims left by the last coalition government.

Again, when I speak to veterans, that is one of the most important areas for them, because the frustration that is being relayed back to me about their interaction with the department and the delays and times that they have to wait in order to have their claims processed is really a concern to them. I'm pleased to see that we've not only employed 500 staff to date but are employing another 141 to ensure that those applications are processed in a timely manner. Labor is indeed responding to the voices of our veterans. But, again, it is doing it in a responsible, step-by-step way.

The second area I want to focus on is housing, because, again, we often hear the debate about housing both here in this chamber and throughout the community. I do not deny that there is some real housing stress out there in the community, as reported daily by various commentators and in the media. The reality is that both rents and housing costs are increasing, as are interest rates. The fact is that rental and housing costs and interest rates were all on the upward march when Labor was elected in 2022. Coalition members opposite don't ever seem to acknowledge that. The trend was already there—and it was there because of the nine years of neglect in so many areas relating to housing. So, by the time Labor came into office, certainly things continued to rise.

I also point out that the largest increase in housing costs in this country occurred in 2021. It wasn't after Labor took office; it was before. From there, housing costs have continued to rise, and I accept that. The most effective way of dealing with the housing crisis is to increase housing supply. There are lots of other good ideas out there, and everybody talks about them and puts them on the table. But the reality is that if we want to stabilise the housing market, if we want to bring down rental prices, we have to increase supply. That is the simplest and most effective way of doing it. To do that, we need to build more houses, and Labor has committed an additional $6.2 billion in this budget, taking our total housing package to $32 billion since we've come to office.

The reality is that building houses can't be done overnight either. It's something that will take time—and it will take time because of, again, their neglecting to get the number of tradespeople trained up in this country and because we have to go through the process of getting infrastructure built, allotments carved out and so on where land is available. So $1 billion of the money allocated in the budget will go directly into building the infrastructure that is needed for those new homes and into social housing. To help with the trades shortages, 15,000 fee-free TAFE and VET places in construction will be funded, as well as 5,000 pre-apprenticeship places.

Again, this is the sort of planning that should have been done years ago. If it had been, we wouldn't have these skills shortages today, and if we didn't have these skills shortages then the prices of tradespeople that people have to bear in the market today would not be exorbitant. But that's where we're at, and we have to deal with the situation we're confronted with.

The coalition's simplistic response to Australia's housing crisis is to simply cut migration—and can I say, that is a simplistic response. Even if it was implemented right now, it wouldn't fix the problem, because it is a problem that we are confronted with right here and now, regardless of what might happen into the future with migration. But, nevertheless, that's the really simplistic response we heard from the Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply. Managing and reforming Australia's migration system is important, particularly in planning for the future, but closing the borders will not fix the housing demands of today. Moreover, it was under the last coalition government's watch that the Australian population grew by three million whilst nothing was done about housing supply. Australia's population in 2013, when the last coalition government came to office, was 23 million. When they left office in 2022, it was 26 million. That was a three-million-person increase in this country, and that includes the two years or so when, because of COVID, our borders were closed. The reality is that Labor was left to deal with that population increase when it came to office.

The last matter I have time to address in my remarks—quite frankly, there are a number of other matters I would have dearly loved to address—is to do with our health services. Again, across the nation, our health services are under stress, and that applies to every state that I get feedback from. Good health services are important for every Australian, and the Albanese government has continued to increase health funding, with another $2.8 billion in this budget, which will strengthen Medicare, make medicines cheaper, expand Medicare urgent-care clinics to an additional 29 sites, index the Medicare rebate on pathology tests, expand mental health services and also fund several women's and Indigenous health programs throughout the country. That's just part of what it will do, but it provides a snapshot of the priorities and values of this government.

I'm pleased to see that in Makin, the area I represent, there will be a Medicare urgent-care clinic. This is one of the 29 that will be funded under this budget in addition to the 58 that have already been established. That clinic is important to my electorate because within my electorate is the Modbury Hospital, and the Modbury Hospital outpatients department is under severe stress. It's under stress because people use the hospital because they can't get urgent care at normal GP clinics after hours. So the whole intent of the Medicare urgent-care clinic is to provide that service after hours and, in doing so, take pressure off the Modbury Hospital, which will then be able to deal with, I guess, the more urgent cases that require hospitalisation. I thank Minister Mark Butler and state health minister Chris Picton, who came out to my electorate only last week and made that announcement about the new Medicare urgent-care clinic.

In closing, this is a budget that is responsible, it's a budget that's been sensibly thought through, it's a budget that sets out a plan for the future and it's a budget that I believe shows that the responsibility of addressing the nation's economy rests with the government of the day, and that's exactly what this government seeks to do with this budget.

See this speech in context