Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Acting Prime Minister. How is the Albanese Labor government helping with the cost of living by getting wages moving again? How are other policies helping with the cost of living, and what barriers have there been?

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. In meeting the cost-of-living challenge, a key objective of our government has been to get wages going, and we've been doing that by increasing the minimum wage and by seeing award increases in sectors like aged care and child care. This is now flowing through to the wider labour market such that we are now experiencing the strongest real wage growth in four years. Now, we get that Australians are doing it tough, and there is a lot more which needs to be done, but these extra dollars in the pay packet are making a real difference. In particular, this is benefitting women because these increases are occurring across the care economy, and, as a result, the gender pay gap is now at its lowest level on record.

We are also reducing costs. We're doing so through more affordable child care, through cheaper medicines and through free TAFE. But the biggest risk to that—well, he is sitting right there, and yesterday we got a crystal-clear articulation of the philosophies of those opposite when the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said:

… it's a key principle and tenet of the Liberal Party: if you don't pay for something, you don't value it.

Well, it's nothing if it isn't honest, because this was exactly demonstrated when the Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Health, when he tried to introduce a GP tax, when he tried to put a cost on the attendance of emergency departments right around the country and when he sought to increase the prices of basic medicines. What he did as the Minister for Health, if given the chance, he would do as the Prime Minister across the board.

On this side of the House, we have a very different philosophy, because we understand that Australians in their darkest hour, who are receiving emergency care in emergency departments without charge, do value that. We understand that Australians who are undergoing life-saving surgery so that they can return to their families—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is going to cease interjecting. I can appreciate there might be some response included to what the Acting Prime Minister is saying,but you and the member for Barker are just continually running through commentary. It's not sustainable. We're just going to dial it down for the remainder of this answer. There are only 26 seconds. I'm setting everyone a challenge just to get through this answer.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

without a crippling debt value that too. On this side of the House, we are proud to stand as the party which has been the champion, throughout our nation's history, of public health and of public education, and we most certainly will take that philosophy to the next election, when Australians will be given a choice between a government which is fighting for them and a man who represents a material risk to the household budgets of every single Australian.