Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Under this bad Labor government, Australians living standards have collapsed by 8.7 per cent. This is the biggest collapse on record and bigger than any other peer economy. Will the Prime Minister now apologise for promising Australians they would be better off, and admit that Australians can't afford another three years of Labor?

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

I'm asked about the impact of policy on people's living standards. I make this point. If the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer had their way, Australian families would be $7,200 worse off than they are today. We inherited—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

Order! The members on my left will cease interjecting.

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

I'll explain it for the shadow Treasurer. Under you, when inflation was going up and wages were going down, people were worse off. Now inflation's going down and wages are going up. That's what lifts people up, and that is what we are achieving. We understand that we inherited a system where inflation had a six in front of it. We know that people were really struggling. Interest rates started to go up under them. And we know that global inflation has had an impact as well, due to range of measures, including the long tail of COVID.

That is why we have taken action. That is why we produced a tax cut for every taxpayer. Without our tax cuts, 84 per cent of taxpayers would have been worse off. Under their system, that they maintain support for and that they said they would go back to, 84 per cent of taxpayers would have been worse off and 2.9 million taxpayers wouldn't have seen a cent. Without our cheaper medicines—that they opposed—Australians would have been $1 billion worse off, and the most vulnerable Australians are amongst those. Without our Medicare urgent care clinics, 1.1 million Australians wouldn't have got a free doctor's appointment. We know why they opposed it. It's because the Leader of the Opposition, when he was health minister, said that there were too many free health appointments. Medicare was bad because it was free, which is why he tried to introduce a GP tax, just as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has said that free TAFE is not valued because it's free—because you don't value it unless you pay for it. If it wasn't for us, 5.8 million extra bulk-billed appointments wouldn't have happened. Importantly, to follow-up on the former minister and his hard work on IR, 2.6 million award wage workers would be worse off. Remember, during the last campaign, they opposed a one dollar an hour increase and said it was going to destroy the entire economy. We said that we absolutely would support it—as we have—not once, not twice, but three times with consecutive minimum wage increases. (Time expired)

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Early Childhood Education. How is the Albanese Labor government providing cost-of-living relief for early childhood education? Is there anything that could put this at risk and see families worse off?

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Spence for his question, because the member for Spence understands that investing in early childhood education helps workers, and it helps families. We're building the foundations for a future where every single Australian child and every single Australian family can have access to good quality early education. We came into government in 2022 with a commitment to make early childhood education and care more affordable through our cheaper childcare reforms. We quickly turned that commitment into progress, with more than a million families benefiting from those reforms. For an Australian family earning $120,000 a year, accessing 30 hours of early learning a week, they've saved around $2,766 since September 2023. Out-of-pocket expenses are still lower today than what they were before our cheaper childcare reforms.

That's real cost-of-living relief. But, of course, we know that there's more to do. That's why we're continuing to put downward pressure on fees through our fee caps—4.4 per cent in the first year and 4.2 per cent in the second year—as part of our worker retention payment. Our government has delivered a 15 per cent pay rise for up to 200,000 early childhood education workers right across Australia because we know that a strong and sustainable workforce is absolutely fundamental to a universal early learning system. That's why we've invested in it. I'm pleased to say that, in the short time since we've introduced that wage increase, more than 50 per cent of services have now applied for that wage increase. That's made a significant difference to the lives of so many early childhood workers, but also to the sector more broadly. New data just in shows that workforce vacancy rates in the early childhood sector have plummeted over the last 12 months, by 22 per cent since December 2023.

I'm asked about risks. The fact is that the Leader of the Opposition has confirmed that they will make huge cuts but that Australians will be left in the dark as to what those cuts are until after the election. But there might be some clues into what they might be cutting in the fact that they opposed every single cost-of-living measure that we put forward. We don't know what the risk is going to be, but we do know this: we know that while this Albanese Labor government wants to see children accessing the transformational benefits of early learning and wants to see families accessing the essential services they need so that they can work or study, the Leader of the Opposition wants to see bosses getting free lunches on the taxpayer dollar.