Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

And the leading advocate for the nuclear reactor industry over there is going off. There's a meltdown happening! There's a meltdown. This guy wants a plan that will cost $600 billion, that's the most expensive form of new energy possible and that will produce four per cent of Australia's energy needs sometime in the 2040s—sometime in the 2040s! And it is a plan that the private sector won't have a bar of, which is why it has to be funded by the taxpayer, which is why they will have to cut health, education, services, housing, public servants—everything. The only cut this bloke doesn't want is a cut to peoples' taxes. That is the only cut he doesn't like.

Then we go to health care and bulk-billing. In our first term, in the last budget, the bulk-billing incentive was tripled for 11 million Australians, and last night's budget extends that to 27 million Australians, enabling the bulk-billing rate to be lifted to 90 per cent. We know those opposite supported zero rates of bulk-billing because they tried to introduce a tax for every time people visited the GP or every time they visited an emergency department and they tried to increase the cost of pharmaceuticals as well. There is one thing that they have said right in the last week: 'If you want to look at what they'll do, have a look at past performance.' We know what their past performance has been.

Then we get to urgent care clinics. We promised 50; we delivered 87 and we are going to deliver another 50. This is the sort of investment that those opposite say is 'waste' that they want to get rid of. When it comes to medicines, they ridiculed our plan for cheaper medicines and they ridiculed our plan for 60-day dispensing, both of which are making a difference to Australians out there. We have frozen the cost of PBS medicines for pensioners to just $7.70 while for other Australians the price for PBS medicines is down to $25, the same price that they were in 2004. This bloke, last time he was in office, tried to increase it by $5.

During our first term, we delivered cheaper child care, benefitting families by $2,700. This time around, we have abolished the activity test, provided three days guaranteed child care and put a billion dollars into childcare infrastructure. Then we go to schools. We came into office in 2007, and Julia Gillard, as education minister, implemented the Gonski review, which identified the school resourcing standard, to give every Australian young person the opportunity to succeed in life. We started that process. Those opposite came into office and, at the same time as ripping $50 billion out of public hospitals, they ripped $30 billion out of public schools. They don't like anything to do with public over there; that is very, very clear. This week, after working with sensible people in the state conservative parties like Premier David Crisifulli, we have included a schools funding agreement, $16.5 billion, in last night's budget. We have increased investment from the states and territories to make a substantial difference.

Then we have TAFE. We have free TAFE; 600,000 Australians have benefited. The deputy leader came to this dispatch box and said, 'People don't value it because it's free'. Those opposite don't understand what Australians' values are, so no wonder they don't like Medicare, no wonder they don't like free TAFE, no wonder they don't like public education. We will make our free TAFE permanent. We have already taken $3 billion off peoples' HECS debts but we will take a further 20 per cent off the HECS debt that people—young Australians, in particular—have to pay. Again, those opposite, by saying it's all waste, are holding the line.

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