Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This budget is about easing cost-of-living pressures, and there is a massive amount of support in this budget. Every taxpayer in my electorate, and 13.6 million people around the country, is getting a tax cut. Every household is getting energy bill relief, the 2.6 million workers on award wages are getting a pay rise, and there are now cheaper medicines and an extra two weeks of paid parental leave.

Specifically, the budget is also about building more homes for Australia, and there's a $32 billion package here. This government has been undertaking the task of building more homes for Australians—social and affordable housing or other sorts of assistance. It's investing in our Future Made in Australia with a commitment of $22.7 billion. We are strengthening Medicare and the care economy with an extra $2.8 billion in the budget. We're broadening opportunities and advancing equality in the budget as well.

I do recall those 'debt bombshell' trucks travelling around the country before the 2013 election, with photos of the then Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, sitting in front of them. Then of course we had Tony Abbott, the then Leader of the Opposition after him, because they swapped leaders as much as we did—or more, actually. In terms of the budget papers, there was $189 billion in debt when we left office in 2013. It was forecast to be $1.3 trillion in debt when those opposite left. It got as high as $1 trillion. You're talking about a situation with a forecast of 55 per cent of GDP. The hypocrisy of debt being seven times bigger under the coalition than under us is simply rank and rife, to be honest with you. We get lectures about debt and deficit from those opposite, when the deficit from the previous budget of the coalition government before they lost office, of $78 billion, has been turned into tens of billions of dollars of surplus under Labor.

We are seeing a moderation of CPI. We know people are doing it tough, but the inflation rate is now half of what it was at the peak under the coalition. It was at 6.1 per cent when they lost office. That was the situation under those opposite. They couldn't bank a saving, year after year. I recall the opposition Treasury spokesperson, Joe Hockey, saying that they would deliver a surplus in their first year and every year thereafter. They handed down a budget in 2014 that led to the decline and dismissal by the coalition caucus of the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. To get lectures from those opposite is a bit hypocritical.

We are providing an enormous amount of cost-of-living relief in this budget. In my electorate 80,000 people get a tax cut. Ninety per cent of taxpayers are better off under us than they would have been under the Morrison government. If you're earning up to $45,000 a year, you would have had no tax relief under the Coalition, but under us there's tax relief, and it's in the budget. Some local families will see an entire month of mortgage repayments wiped away by this budget. Some will be able to pay off their homes faster thanks to the tax cuts.

We're also providing $300 in energy bill relief for every household in Blair, and $325 for small businesses. It comes on top of the thousand dollars delivered by the Queensland government's energy rebate, which means a household in Blair can get up to $1,300 in total off their electricity bills.

I mentioned before the 2.6 million Australians benefiting from a rise in the minimum wage. This is the third consecutive pay rise for those low-paid workers. Many of them were heroes in the pandemic. Aged-care workers and retail workers did it tough. Many of them got abused. They had really difficult shift work. Those opposite couldn't see themselves at all fit to support a pay rise at any stage during nine years of long Coalition rule. A combination, for example, of Labor's tax cuts and wage rises means that many workers in my electorate will be $50 a week better off. They will earn more and keep more of what they earn through the entire year. That's really important.

From 1 July we have frozen the cost of PBS medicines for everyone. That makes an enormous difference for people. I recall those opposite saying pharmacists were going to reel when we spread out the scripts from 30 days to 60 days. All of a sudden there were pharmacies that were going to collapse. I dealt with the over 30 pharmacies in my electorate. I haven't seen one pharmacy close; not one. None of the pharmacists have told me they had to put off staff. What we're doing is providing additional support to strengthen Medicare and provide additional support for cheaper medicines. Pensioners and concession card holders in my electorate won't pay more than $7.70 for their PBS medications for five years thanks to the Albanese government's commitment to cheaper medicines. Residents in my electorate have already saved over $2 million thanks to the Albanese government's commitment to delivering cheaper medicines. Everyone in Blair who accesses PBS medicines is set to save even more thanks to our freeze on the maximum cost of the PBS. We're investing $4 billion to help deliver cheaper medicines to ease the cost pressures on household budgets. We've also added more medicines on the PBS.

We've invested $2.8 billion to strengthen Medicare by providing additional Medicare urgent care clinics. The urgent care clinic in Ipswich is a big success. There have been about 6,000 visits to that clinic since it was opened. It works in conjunction with the satellite hospital delivered by Queensland Health at Ripley, as well as the emergency department at Ipswich Hospital. That's really important. We're expanding Medicare coverage in the budget to four MRI machines in Blair, expanding affordable access to imaging services in my electorate. That's very important.

One of the biggest sources of assistance in this budget is the $3 billion in student HELP debt relief that we are providing, which I think is really important. I've got both the University of Southern Queensland Springfield campus and the University of Southern Queensland Ipswich campus in my electorate, so this helps 23,000 people in my electorate with a HELP debt. We've increased the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance by 10 per cent, and that builds on the 15 per cent of the previous budget. That helps more than 12,000 households in Blair. That, combined with the other changes we've made, makes a huge difference to people on low incomes who are battling. The additional two weeks of paid parental leave brings the entitlement to 22 weeks a year. We're providing more funding for more homes in my electorate, boosting house supply and affordability. You can see that in suburbs like Ripley and Springfield and other suburbs in my electorate. We're providing a lot of assistance in this space.

One of the big changes that we've made that helps a lot of people is reforming the disability sector. I had Bill Shorten in my electorate, the Minister for Government Services. He's got responsibility for reforming the NDIS, and that's really critical. Those foundational supports were taken away by state and territory governments, and we, in partnership with the states and territories, are bringing those foundational supports. Not everyone qualifies for the NDIS. Not everyone does. But we're providing additional support, and in the budget we provided an extra $468.7 million to support people with disability and get the NDIS back on track.

As of 31 December 2023, there were a total of 646,449 participants in the NDIS. There are many, many thousands in my electorate. It is absolutely crucial. And I know that my electorate has a lot of people living with disability because, historically, it's been an area where we had, for example, the Challinor Centre, based on the campus of the University of Southern Queensland. People living in institutions were then brought into the community, and that was a good thing. It was a humane and decent thing to do. We've also got a large number of people living with disability who have access to the NDIS, and it's a great reform.

I commend the member for Maribyrnong, the minister for government service delivery, for the work he's doing in reforming the NDIS. It's a big, critical part of the budget. I know that the growth in it had to be tempered and that it's a reform of the process. There are too many fraudsters and crooks associated with the NDIS. We want people to get the care they deserve and need, and the financial support that is provided in the NDIS is critical for that space. But we need to make sure that this particular system is viable and will continue, and that's why the budget is so important for my electorate, particularly for people living with disability.

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