Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I will first also acknowledge the honourable speaker Seoule and welcome you to Australia. We're very pleased to have our friends from Vanuatu with us today. If we're a little feisty, you'll understand this is the robust Australian democracy, Mr Speaker!

President, senators and Senator Grogan, I would say to you that what we see from 1 July are tax cuts. There's a tax cut for every taxpayer in Australia—13.6 million Australians, 2.9 million low-paid workers, many of whom are people who supported the coalition. They must be scratching their heads wondering why it is that the coalition are so opposed to so many of the cost-of-living measures that the government has put in place. Of course, there is the tax cut for every Australian taxpayer, not just some. On top of that there's the $300 energy bill relief for every Australian household and $325 for small businesses. Remember when they were the party of small business?

There's a freeze on the cost of PBS medicines for every Australian and a third consecutive pay rise for 2.6 million workers—they're not excited about that because they believe in low wages as a deliberate design feature of the Australian economy. On top of that, there's more funding to build more homes and an increase to paid parental leave on top of cheaper child care, fee-free TAFE and the biggest investment ever in expanding bulk-billing.