Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night Treasurer Jim Chalmers stood up in this chamber and spoke to the budget that the Albanese Labor government is delivering—another budget that is relentlessly focused on two things: keeping down the cost of living for working Australians, without adding to inflation, and ensuring that we have an economy that continues to build things, make things and employ people here in Australia. Underpinning the effort to reduce the cost of living is, of course, Labor's tax cut plan—a tax cut for every single taxpaying Australian. That's 13.6 million people across our country who will be getting a tax cut. There's no paperwork required to fill out, and they don't have to wait for tax return time. They will be getting a tax cut from 1 July.

In my electorate of Hawke, 73,000 people will be getting a tax cut and an average worker will be getting a tax cut of $1,428 a year as a result of Labor's tax cut plan. This is in stark contrast, extraordinarily stark contrast, to those opposite and their decade of waste and mismanagement. They have left our country with a trillion dollars of Liberal debt that we are working through cleaning up. We have delivered another budget surplus; we are delivering tax cuts for Australians; we are delivering cheaper power, through our bill rebates; and we are making sure that our economy works for working Australians, as opposed to the approach of those opposite, who only care about the big end of town.