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

I thank Senator Walsh for that question and for her assessment of the national accounts. The national accounts show the challenges facing the economy. They also support the Albanese government's balanced plan to fight inflation while helping those who are doing it tough. The accounts confirm the impact of global economic uncertainty, higher interest rates and persistent—but moderating—inflation on the Australian economy in the June quarter. The data shows Australians are continuing to limit their spending, with household spending under pressure. This clearly demonstrates that the approach we took in the budget was the right one in response to these difficult conditions. It gives us more confidence in the economic judgements we've made, but we're not complacent about the soft landing that we are working towards.

Critical to that approach is the government's rolling out of more cost-of-living relief for Australians through September—as Senator Walsh outlined in her question—and providing more money to help pay the rent, more help for people on payments and cheaper medicines for more Australians. From September, the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance will increase by a further 10 per cent. We're finalising the rollout of 60-day dispensing with additional medicines being made available, bringing the total to almost 300. We're extending the higher rate of JobSeeker to single recipients who have an assessed partial capacity to work less than 15 hours per week, delivering at least an additional $54.90 a fortnight. Payments are being indexed for people on JobSeeker, the age pension, the disability support pension, the carer payment and the parenting payment on top of the Commonwealth rent assistance increase. This is on top of new data that shows that Australians have saved more than half a billion dollars since the Albanese government introduced cheaper medicines.

We know that there's more to do in the fight against inflation, and we acknowledge that. That's why we're rolling out more responsible cost-of-living relief from September, whilst at the same time turning big Liberal deficits into Labor surpluses— (Time expired)