Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor's 2024-25 budget is delivering for Australians. From cost-of-living relief to women's health and renewable energy, it's all in the budget. It's also a budget that delivers for my community in Canberra, and that's something that we have not seen for a decade, because the previous government did not treat our community with the respect that it deserved or invest in the things that are important, either for our community and the challenges and opportunities we face in the way that all communities do or for our city as a national capital of our nation belonging to all Australians. Just this week, I've had the great pleasure of hosting three ministerial visits in my electorate relating to budget announcements, with the Minister for Small Business, with the Minister for Education and this morning with the Minister for Early Childhood Education. I want to talk more about those later in my speech.

Our government is committed to supporting Australians through the tough time they are facing at the moment. We are actively working to make things fairer and more equitable. Our biggest priority is to ease cost-of-living pressures, and this budget is doing just that while also setting Australia up for the future. Australians are doing it tough right now. We've had a difficult 10 years under a coalition government, which ended with a global pandemic. Across the world, economies are still struggling to know how to deal with the fallout from 2020. But our government is taking charge, and we are ensuring that all Australians experience cost-of-living relief through our policies.

From 1 July this year, every Australian taxpayer will get a tax cut—every single one. That's 13.6 million people around the country. We want Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn. In my electorate of Canberra, 78,000 people will receive a tax cut. We are also delivering $300 of energy bill relief for every household, meaning 10 million households across the country will receive a $300 rebate on their energy bills. Our government is also committed to helping one million Australians with the cost of rent by increasing the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance by 10 per cent and building on the increase we delivered in last year's budget.

We're also providing more social housing, cheaper medicines and improved housing conditions for remote Indigenous communities. This is building on our commitments from previous budgets for cheaper child care, creating jobs and getting wages moving again. This is a budget that delivers for young people, including those studying at university or TAFE.

Yesterday, it was my great pleasure to join the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, at the University of Canberra, in their Clinical Education and Research Centre, to meet with nursing students about the changes to university prac placements. I want to thank Deputy Vice-Chancellor Michelle Lincoln and her team, and the nursing students Brandon, Anna and Xanthe, who we met yesterday, for having us.

In the budget, the Treasurer announced that the Commonwealth would be establishing a new prac payment from July next year. As we all know, practical placements are a compulsory and necessary part of many degree programs. They provide vital experience and training in a student's chosen field, preparing them for their future career. But almost always these pracs are unpaid. This means that students have been expected to turn up to their prac, often full time, and essentially work for free, with no or limited time to work outside of that. This has been a huge barrier to many, even those who are just beginning degrees that they would like to undertake. These placements are for some of the most critically important careers in our community and economy. I'm talking about nursing, midwifery, social work and teaching. These are the areas that will benefit from this new payment.

I remember when I was at university how difficult it was for people needing to go away to a placement in another town or city to balance paying the rent for their current accommodation and their accommodation while they were away. This was also while they were trying to get leave, although most were casual and couldn't take leave from the jobs they were using to support themselves while studying. So this payment is about supporting those students to continue with these really important degrees that they are doing. It was great to talk about this yesterday at the University of Canberra, which is a key training institution in our region for nurses, teachers and social work students. It was great to talk particularly to the nursing students there about their experiences and how this payment would assist people. But this new payment isn't all we're doing in higher education.

The government is also reforming the HECS system. We've all heard from students in our electorates about their legitimate concerns regarding their HECS debts. I understand their concern. HECS debts today are significantly larger than what they were when I studied at uni. Last year, the indexation that was made in line with the consumer price index was really difficult for people. Many saw the debt they'd paid off over the previous year reappear. It wasn't fair. So we've taken the decision to wipe $3 billion off Australians' HECS debts. In my electorate of Canberra this will impact approximately 22,670 students. We've also changed how indexation works so that each year HECS debts will be indexed at the lower of the CPI or the wage price index.

This morning, I had the great pleasure of visiting Goodstart Garran and Assunta and the team there. I have visited this centre many times, but this time I was joined by the Minister for Early Childhood Education, Dr Anne Aly, to talk with the educators there about the work that they do and of course to chat to lots of the children who were starting their day there.

As a mother who currently has one child in early childhood education and another who has been through early childhood education and is now at school, it really is humbling to see the work that the early childhood educators do every day to care for and educate our children and how much this means to families and our community more broadly. This work requires great dedication, skill and patience. It's a really special person that is able to do that job. Most of them that I have spoken to are so passionate and committed to what they do, so it's well beyond time that they received more recognition and better pay for what they do. I was really proud that our budget also included a commitment to increase the wages of early childhood educators. It was great to talk about that this morning with the team at Garran Goodstart and also with Ros Baxter, the CEO of Goodstart Australia.

The government is investing in Australian skills. In Canberra, we're establishing the nation's first ever TAFE centre of excellence, right here at the CIT in Fyshwick. There was already a nation-leading electric vehicle training hub there, but for Canberra to host the very first of the national TAFE centres of excellence is, again, something I cannot imagine would have happened under the previous government and something that is great for not just our city but the region and even nationally. We've had students coming here to acquire those really important skills as we move towards having more electric vehicles on the road and needing the skills to look after those vehicles. This is a total investment of $24.1 million into Canberra which includes not only funding from the ACT government but also, I believe, around $18 million from the federal government to get that up and running. Canberra has one of the highest take-ups of electric vehicles, so that's particularly relevant to our city.

The 2024 budget also delivers for small business. It was fantastic on Monday to join the Minister for Small Business, Julie Collins, to visit the Scott Leggo Gallery in Kingston, one of Canberra's most loved small businesses. It's run by my constituents, Scott and Philippa Leggo. People might be familiar with Scott's magnificent, beautiful landscape photography, which captures not just our city but the nation. You can go there to get a magnificent piece for your wall or smaller gifts, even jigsaws. It's a really great business. It was wonderful to have the minister with me there on Monday to talk to them not only about the pressures they are facing but also about the energy rebate that we're delivering for small business. This is a $325 payment for small businesses to help with their energy costs and it's expected that it will go to 18,000 small businesses across the ACT. It's part of $640 million of targeted support to small businesses in the budget. We're also extending the $20,000 instant asset write-off for small business across the country so they can invest in what they need to make their businesses thrive.

I want to take a moment to talk about the Canberra business community because this is another thing that many people in this place take for granted. We are nation's capital and we house the nation's Public Service, but our business community punches above its weight in terms of innovation. No-one is more passionate about Canberra than our small business community. It really is the small businesses that make Canberra such a wonderful place not only to live but also to visit and they give our city its vibrancy. I'm proud that our government is supporting small businesses in Canberra and around the country.

This is a budget that delivers for Australian women. We're putting women and gender equality at the centre of our economic plan. We want to make women's lives safer, fairer and more equal. When you have more diverse voices, you get better outcomes and that's what this budget delivers. The Albanese government is the first federal government in the nation's history with a majority of women. You can see that in the issues that we talk about and the perspectives that we bring. In the 2024 budget we're bringing the total amount of funding to support women's safety and the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children to over $3.4 billion since our government was elected. This includes $925 million over five years for the permanent Leaving Violence Program to deliver financial support for victim-survivors leaving a violent intimate partner relationship, as well as support services for up to 12 weeks. It includes $44 million in the next financial year to support the national legal assistance partnership and family violence prevention legal services, including additional funding to address community legal sector pay disparity.

We know gender based and sexual violence is an issue on university campuses. To help stop this violence, our government will deliver $19.4 million over two years to establish a national student ombudsman to help to eradicate gender based violence from universities, and $18.7 million over four years to establish a national higher education code to prevent and respond to gender based violence. We have also committed $9.6 million over five years to further support informed policy advice to government to end gender based violence. This includes $4.3 million to further build the evidence base on pathways into and out of perpetration of domestic and sexual violence, and $1.3 million for a rapid review of targeted prevention approaches to violence against women.

We're also delivering $160 million for women's health. Thousands of women around Australia are dealing with complex gynaecological conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis. Our government is committing $49 million to introduce longer consultations for these conditions on Medicare. I also just want to take this opportunity to congratulate the assistant minister for health on the wonderful work she has been doing in this area. Her consultations with women around the country about their experiences in the health system have really opened—what should I say?—a can of worms with women expressing the challenges that they have had in order to be taken seriously and to be diagnosed. It is really shining a light on these issues of which I think I can say all women have had some experience to varying degrees in the health system. The outcome is, of course, commitments like this, to delivering better for women and their health. We're also committing $5.5 million for the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare to develop a dataset on sexual and reproductive health and $1 million over two years for a miscarriage data scoping study.

I'm running out of time. So which excellent measures should I talk about in the time remaining? I do want to talk about—as I've said, this is a budget for Canberra. But a particularly fantastic announcement for Canberra was $250 million of funding for the Australian Institute of Sport. This is a really important national institution where our athletes train. It was a world leading institution in the way that it brought together multidisciplinary approaches to sport and athletes all in one place. It has been neglected for too long, so I was really proud to join the Prime Minister, the Minister for Sport and my ACT Labor representative colleagues at the AIS to announce that much-needed funding, our government having already committed that the AIS would indeed remain in the nation's capital and have that significance as a national institution.

It's also wonderful that the government has announced further investment into stage 2B of a light rail to Woden and an investment in the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, things that we would never have seen under the previous government. I'm very proud of the budget and that it's a budget that delivers for all Australians, including in Canberra.

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