Jodie Belyea (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor government helping workers and families with the cost of living and a more secure retirement? What approaches has the government rejected?

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

The reason I'm especially grateful to the member for Dunkley for asking this question today is that I remember being in her community during her by-election campaign earlier this year. We talked about one of the major reasons why we changed the tax cuts. It was to deliver for Australian women and Australian workers more broadly. We also spoke to the early childhood educators in her community about our best efforts to get them the decent pay they need and deserve to do their really important work. In the short time that the member for Dunkley has been here, we've made substantial progress on the issues that we discussed that day.

This is a really big day for Australian parents, and especially for the mums of Middle Australia. Today, the government introduced legislation to pay superannuation on paid parental leave. And I want to pay tribute to Minister Rishworth, Minister Jones, Minister Gallagher, the Prime Minister, the cabinet and the caucus for making sure that we deliver on this commitment to Australian working parents to pay superannuation on paid parental leave.

This policy has been a priority of ours for some time and we are really proud to be taking the necessary steps to deliver it. It's a really important part of our efforts to ensure that Australian women earn more and keep more of what they earn and also retire with more, as well. Paying super on PPL will provide a more secure retirement for around 180,000 families each year. Unlike Senator Rennick and some of his colleagues on the other side, we support women's workforce participation and more secure well-paid jobs for women.

We are making good progress. Most of the almost one million jobs that have been created under this Prime Minister have been jobs filled by women. Women's workforce participation is now at a record high of 63.2 per cent. We are delivering really important pay rises in parts of our economy where the workforce is dominated by women, such as early childhood, aged care and the like. As I said a moment ago, one of the main motivations for delivering a tax cut for every taxpayer in the way that we are doing it is to make sure that Australian working women get a fairer ago, as well. Because of that, combined with the wages growth that we've seen, the average take-home pay for women working full time is more than $68 a week higher than it would have been under the wage growth of those opposite and the tax cuts of those opposite. We have spent this week working for and delivering for Middle Australia. We've been focused on the main game while they have been focused on political games. It's all about Australian workers earning more and keeping more of what they earn—and, because of our efforts, retiring with more as well.