Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Green for the question. We are working hard—and I support the remarks made by our leader to a question earlier—to support Australians with cost-of-living relief without adding to the inflation challenge.

The latest ABS data has shown some good moderation, month-to-month, from 5.6 to 4.9 per cent. Westpac, in its CPI indicator report released today, said, 'Government policies are holding down inflation,' while the Deloitte Access Economics Budget Monitor of November 2023 on the fiscal responsibility of the Albanese Labor government said:

The Government took the option to bank most of the additional cash at the time of the 2023-24 Budget in May, which was good for the country's fiscal position and didn't add significantly to inflation.

Government policy, including rent assistance and the Energy Price Relief Plan, has taken some of the pressure off, but we acknowledge that households are doing it tough while inflation remains higher than we would like for longer than we would like. The OECD economic outlook for November has stated:

The Commonwealth Government's Energy Price Relief Plan, which set a cap on wholesale coal and gas prices—

They didn't insert there that you'd voted against it, but I'll add that in—

and provided targeted energy bill relief, is expected to reduce headline inflation by ¾ of a percentage point by the second quarter of 2024.

With all of these results coming in, you can see that the decisions we have taken are helping to alleviate cost-of-living pressures on households while also not making the inflation challenge harder. Our policies, including cheaper child care, reducing medicine costs, boosting wages, ensuring good minimum wage increases and fair pay for aged-care workers, creating more than 600,000 jobs— (Time expired)