Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks to the wonderful member for Robertson for the way that he represents his community in this place. Cost-of-living relief in the budget is for everyone, in the form of tax cuts for taxpayers, energy bill relief for households and getting wages moving again for all Australian workers. But, as we are a Labor government, there is also a particular emphasis on the low-paid and people on pensions and payments. Two point nine million Australians earning less than $45,000 will get the tax cut they need and deserve, which would have been denied by those opposite. There are cheaper medicines, through our freezing the maximum cost of PBS medicines for five years for people with a concession card. We have frozen deeming rates for 876,000 people, including 450,000 age pensioners. And about 200,000 of the million people who will benefit from our increase to Commonwealth rent assistance are on the age pension as well. All of that means that the pension is up about $120 a fortnight since we came to office, JobSeeker is up about the same, rent assistance is up by about $81 a fortnight, and youth allowance is up by between $81 and $108 a fortnight. This is because of decisions that we've taken and funded in the budget, combined with the indexation of payments.

Until the member for Hume became the shadow Treasurer, that indexation of payments was more or less a bipartisan thing. Then he started talking about $315 billion of overspending in the budget, which includes the indexation of pensions and payments. He calls that 'overspending'. It should send a shiver up the spine of every age pensioner in this country that he thinks indexing their pensions is overspending. And, if he thinks there is $315 billion too much spending in the budget, why won't he come clean on his $315 billion of cuts? Could it be because the last time they came into office they smashed Medicare and they came after people on pensions and payments and they brought in robodebt?

It is easy to dismiss this shadow Treasurer because of his bumbling incompetence, his incoherence and his failure to explain even the most basic details in the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply, but it masks a much more dangerous—

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