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

I think Senator Bilyk for her question and for her hard work that she does in the beautiful state of Tasmania, representing all the people of Tasmania. Today, we can assure Australians that, with only five days to go, this government is totally focused on making sure that we are addressing cost-of-living pressures where we can while easing and putting downward pressure on inflation.

In addition to the tax cuts, the budget delivered a further $7.8 billion in cost-of-living relief. We have the tax cuts from 1 July—five days to go—for 13.6 million Australians; not just some taxpayers but all taxpayers. Eighty-four per cent of taxpayers will be better off under our tax plan. We have the $300 in energy bill relief for every household in Australia and $325 for one million small businesses. We have a freeze on PBS medicines. We know that medicines can really hit the hip pocket, particularly for those that are on long-term medications and have to go and get those scripts filled every couple of months or every month, depending on the medication, so we're putting more pressure on making sure that medicines stay affordable. We're increasing rent assistance by a further 10 per cent, building on the 15 per cent that we did in our last budget. We also have debt relief coming in for students to deal with the indexation arrangements of the HELP and HECS debt. We've got paid super on government paid parental leave.