Mary Doyle (Aston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We know that Australians are doing it tough currently, including many people in my electorate of Aston. That's why we're implementing measures to help ease the cost of living for Australians and their families. We acknowledge that people are under pressure, and we're doing something about it. We've provided a tax cut for every Australian taxpayer. We've provided energy relief for every household. We're getting wages moving again. We've increased the minimum wage. We've given a pay rise to aged-care workers, and we're getting a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators. We've made medicines cheaper. We've made early childhood education cheaper. We're taking decisive action to help Australians get fairer prices at the supermarket checkout. We've boosted the Commonwealth rent assistance twice in a row because we want to help people, especially, in that instance, because people are doing it tough in the rental market.

This side of the parliament is trying to help people. Those opposite would do more harm to people, with $315 billion in secret cuts to Medicare, pensions and payments, and that would be a recipe for recession. If we listened to their free advice, Australia would be in recession. Wages would be lower, and there would be no help at all with the cost of living. The Albanese Labor government's focus is on making sure that hardworking members of our community, including our early childhood educators and other essential workers, earn more and keep more of what they earn.

Additionally, a number of weeks back I sent out the latest edition of my newsletter to every household in Aston, which included information on our cost-of-living measures. My office has received numerous calls and messages from constituents, and they were wrapped to hear about the $300 energy rebate and the fact that it will apply automatically with four quarterly instalments of $75 over the year. We know that applying for rebates isn't easy for everyone, and it's why we're making it apply automatically. It's just one less thing for Australians to worry about, and it's real cost-of-living relief. I'm so glad to see that our government's cost-of-living measures are making a real difference to the lives of people in Aston. This is because the Albanese Labor government is committed to helping people and delivering real cost-of-living relief.

Our government is taking decisive action to help consumers get fairer prices at the supermarket checkout, in stores and online. The government released a new mandatory food and grocery code for consultation, which would ensure Aldi, Coles, Woolworths and Metcash are subject to multimillion dollar penalties for serious breaches of the code. CHOICE has also released it's second Albanese government funded price-monitoring report, giving Australians accurate data on where to get the cheapest groceries. We've banned unfair terms and increased penalties for breaches of competition and consumer law, and we are delivering the most significant merger reforms in Australia in almost 50 years. We are working with the states and territories to revitalise national competition policy. The next phase of the ACCC supermarkets inquiry will see the ACCC conduct public hearings with the supermarket sector later in the year. As the Prime Minister said last week, we don't want to see ordinary Australians, families and pensioners being taken for a ride by the supermarkets, and we're taking steps to make sure they get a fair go at the checkout.

The Albanese Labor government has placed a freeze on the cost of PBS medicines, which is another of our measures to help ease the cost of living. This freeze means that people across the country, including thousands of my constituents in Aston, won't pay more on their PBS medications than they are currently. For many Australians, this means that the maximum PBS script stays at the current price of $31.60 for another year, and for pensioners and concession card holders the current price of $7.70 won't increase for another five years.