Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

DONALD () ():

I move:

That the following address-in-reply be agreed to:

To His Excellency the Governor-General

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY—

We, the Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia, in Parliament assembled, desire to express our loyalty to our Most Gracious Sovereign, and to thank Your Excellency for the speech which you have been pleased to address to Parliament.

Senators, I am humbled to move this motion and look forward to making my contribution at a later time, following my first speech.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion. After that, colleagues, thank you for staying for this address in reply. It's not typical to have an audience of this size for a speech like this, but I'm grateful for it. I hope we can take the temperature down just a few degrees and get back to the substantive issue before us, which is to respond to the excellent address the Governor-General gave us in this chamber only a few weeks ago outlining the government's very extensive agenda, which I will come to in a moment.

At the outset, I'd like to take the opportunity to congratulate all new members of this place, particularly the many new senators from the Liberal and National parties elected at this election. It is a very pleasing aspect of this election, I must say. I am sure that you will all make a very valuable contribution to this place in your service to the Australian people over the coming years.

The Governor-General's speech opening parliament is an important event in our political system. As His Excellency said in his speech, the opening of a new parliament marks the opening of a new chapter in our country's history. It is important that at times like this we reflect on where we are as a country and where we want to head. Too often, we forget the remarkable stability of our political system, a system that we have inherited and have improved, a system that combines the history and traditions of Westminster with aspects of America's federal system and adds features that are unique to Australia. Our political system, along with other institutions we have derived from the Western civilisation tradition, such as our common law legal system, individual rights and freedoms and our free market economy, deserves much of the credit for the country we have been able to create and enjoy. But nothing is preordained, and much of the credit must go to the wisdom of the Australian people.

Throughout our history, there have been many times, many forks in the road, when the Australian people were asked to make a decision that would have significantly altered the course our country was on. In its own way, this past election involved such a decision. That is because the 2019 election, more than any other election in recent memory, offered the Australian people a clear choice about how they wanted to be governed. This wasn't just a choice between personalities—between Mr Morrison and Mr Shorten—it was also a choice between two clear and distinct visions about the role government ought to play in the lives of everyday Australians. Much has been made, including in the chamber tonight, of the relatively restrained election policy platform that the Liberal and National parties took to the election. For some it has been a source of criticism. We have been accused of having an insufficiently ambitious legislative agenda. It is true we did not take a platform of radical change to the election, and there is a very good reason for that. While Australia certainly faces challenges, and there are issues this parliament must and will confront in this term, on this side of the chamber we did not believe that Australia was so fundamentally broken that it needed a radical overhaul. Australia is not a perfect country, but we have much to be proud of as a nation. We believe that Australia is a wonderful place to live, work, raise a family, and pursue your own vision of a happy life. We are prosperous, harmonious and free. A radical reform agenda is not needed to secure that. In fact, it's much more likely to put it at jeopardy. What is needed is evolutionary change which reaffirms and strengthens the values and institutions that have already made our country great.

The coalition's vision at the last election was fundamentally about trusting the Australian people. It was about trusting that they knew what was best for their own lives. It was about encouraging their aspirations and making sure that government policy empowered them so they could benefit from their own hard work. It's this vision of trust that is behind the policies we took to the election and it's behind the agenda that the Governor-General laid out in his speech on our behalf.

Take the personal income tax cuts that have passed the parliament in our first sitting week. These are fundamentally about ensuring that Australians are able to keep more of their own money because they know better how to spend it than anyone in this place ever will. They are designed to encourage Australians to work hard and to do the best for themselves and their families, whether that involves going for promotion, starting a new business or simply deciding to spend more time with their kids. These are decisions that people should be able to make without the disincentives that result from an excessive tax burden, unnecessary regulation or an overly technocratic state that attempts to tell them what decisions they ought to be making. This vision explains why the Morrison government is committed to cutting red tape, as the Prime Minister recently outlined in his speech to the Western Australian chamber of commerce.

When we were elected in 2013, the coalition embarked on a red-tape-reduction agenda. In our first three years we reduced the burden of red tape by an estimated $5.8 billion. Removing these outdated and excessive regulations was an important first step, but there is still much that needs to be done. According to the Institute of Public Affairs, red tape costs the Australian economy $176 billion every year. I was very pleased to see my friend, Mr Ben Morton, appointed to take responsibility for that red-tape-reduction agenda from the Prime Minister's department.

Some regulation may be necessary, but Australians don't need a bureaucrat constantly looking over their shoulders and monitoring everything they do as they attempt to go about their business. In order to enable Australians to thrive, we must continue to place trust in them and reduce the excessive regulation and unnecessary red tape that they currently have to deal with. That's why we will continue this project by consulting businesses across Australia and learning from them about the unnecessary or overly complex regulations that they have to deal with. We will then work together to reduce those burdens, if not eliminate them entirely.

Of course, the government has a broader agenda than cutting taxes and reducing red tape, as good as those things are. We are already committed to providing record funding for infrastructure, with $100 billion already allocated over the next decade. And we're providing record spending for health and education funding to ensure the high-quality services that the Australian people expect us to provide are secured. But this is only possible because of the hard work of returning the budget to surplus. In its own way, this is a reflection of the vision we took to the election. That's because, just as we trust the Australian people, the Australian people expect us to engage in prudent economic management so that future generations of Australians are not burdened with the debts of the current generation.

Contrast this to the vision that the Labor Party took to the election. Far from attempting to present themselves as economic conservatives, as Kevin Rudd did in the lead up to the 2007 election, Mr Shorten and the Labor Party got carried away with what they clearly thought was an imminent victory. And so they decided to abandon the caution that opposition leaders usually display. If they want a reminder of just how certain the Labor Party were that they would win the last election, I suggest people reacquaint themselves with what is now a very tragic video clip of Mr Shorten awkwardly telling Arnold Schwarzenegger that he was going to be Australia's next Prime Minister.

In abandoning their prudence, the Labor Party instead embraced a radical far-Left agenda centred around a set of massive tax increases. In total, they went to the election proposing $387 billion in additional taxes. This was not a Labor agenda in the mould of Hawke or Keating; it was a policy agenda much closer to that of Gough Whitlam or even Jeremy Corbyn. Fundamentally, this policy agenda was based on the premise that government bureaucrats, the political class, and in particular Labor MPs themselves, know what is best for the Australian public. In fact, they know so well that they know better than the public what is in their own best interests. Their vision for government was a vision that would disempower Australians, a vision based on the arrogant idea the government knows how to spend money better than the people who put in the hard work to earn it.

This arrogance was in full display when Mr Bowen, the then shadow Treasurer, was questioned about the impact of their $57 billion retirees tax. Let's remember that this was a policy that would have directly affected and damaged the financial security of 900,000 self-funded retirees, many of them on very modest incomes. In fact, 84 per cent of the people who would have been impacted by this tax on retirement savings were on taxable incomes of below $37,000 a year. Disproportionately they were women. How did Chris Bowen respond to the concerns of these Australians? By telling them, 'If you don't like our policies, don't vote for us.'

On one level, I guess, at least that is refreshingly honest. Thankfully, the Australian people did exactly that. So many people abandoned the Labor Party at the last election that their primary vote was the lowest it had ever been in more than 100 years. This election was the most dramatic repudiation of Labor's paternalistic economic policy agenda that is imaginable.

It's worth reflecting briefly on what the Labor Party would have done with this agenda had they in fact been successful at this election. Since the election, they have been advising the government that we should be doing more to stimulate the economy. But their election agenda was about as antistimulatory as it gets. Imagine the consequences for employment and the financial security of all Australians if, at this time of economic uncertainty, their $387 billion plan to increase taxes had been implemented. Thankfully we will never know how damaging that would have been.

One of the groups who abandoned the Labor Party at this election were voters of the faith. To be fair to those opposite, on this issue at least so far there has been some self-reflection on this point. Even Mr Bowen seemed to have changed his tune from the take-it-or-leave it approach mentioned earlier, telling the media that Labor needed to urgently re-engage with religious Australians, many of whom 'no longer feel that progressive politics cares about them.' These are 'people with a social conscience, who want to be included in the progressive movement,' Mr Bowen said.

Anyone who wants to understand why voters of faith are deserting the progressive side in politics in droves needs only to look at the case of Israel Folau. The question of whether Rugby Australia acted within the law in terminating his contract will be determined by the courts. But what we should all be able to agree on is that people shouldn't be fired from their jobs and hounded out of the public square simply for expressing religious beliefs in public. I want to be clear here: personally, I am agnostic. I don't believe that anyone is going to hell. But religious freedom is a fundamental freedom in any free society. It's the only way we can have people of different faiths and, indeed, no faiths live together in relative harmony, as they do in Australia and across much, though not all, of the Western world. Unfortunately, many on the modern left, particularly those who congregate on social media platforms like Twitter, seem to relish searching for anyone who deviates from the dominant progressive orthodoxy, and then doing all that they can to ruin their lives. This is not a recipe for a tolerant, pluralistic society. We're perfectly capable of living among each other, despite our different moral values, if we accept the basic right of our fellow Australians to hold and express their own views on religion or any other question. If we seek to use the state or mob tactics to enforce our own personal moral vision on Australians who don't share it, we will end up bitterly divided and resentful towards each other.

Australians of faith know that it's the Liberal and National parties who are committed to protecting religious freedoms. It is in our political DNA to respect the beliefs and choices of individuals, rather than to dictate to them or to attempt to run their lives. But I am hopeful that the Labor Party will heed the advice of Mr Bowen and others and come to the table with the government in due course to ensure that all Australians' freedoms are protected in this term of parliament.

Personally, I am honoured to have been returned again to represent the people of Victoria as a Liberal senator. It is a rare and special thing to have the opportunity to represent your fellow citizens in this place. I will continue, as I have in my first three years in the Senate, to be a voice for the values of the Liberal cause and to fight to protect the fundamental freedoms of all Australians.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This debate has been brought on quite early because the government has not been able to provide the Senate with the business that we'd normally do at this time. Within that context, it's important to acknowledge that the Governor-General made a speech which outlined a very, very thin series of propositions that this government intends to pursue through this parliament. There are many issues that were neglected in that speech that the country has to face in terms of the welfare of our people, which, frankly, has not been part of the government's thinking.

One of those has been the issue around the questions of cladding on buildings, non-compliant building products and public safety in terms of our housing. We now have a situation where there are tens of thousands of buildings in this country which are in a highly dangerous position, a position which has now become acute. The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews, does not seem to have any grasp of the importance of this question or the seriousness of the safety issues that are facing the building industry, nor the economic consequences for the tens of thousands of Australians who are now faced with a situation where they have units which are virtually worthless, with no capacity to get insurance or to sell.

We hear repeated statements from the minister—in fact, I acknowledge you've been getting quite a sympathetic response from the media, the way the media is running at the moment. As I say, the Murdoch empire won the election, and they feel that they've got to congratulate their champions in the fight, so we hear the minister tell the states they must act, and, of course, this is the position that many here in the gallery take to be the situation. But these headlines miss the essential points that concern this issue. First is that this government cannot pass the buck to the states, because the states and the Commonwealth are collectively responsible for building regulation in this country. Second, and more importantly, is that this crisis has emerged as a result of deregulation and privatisation in the building industry. It is the product of deregulation, privatisation and the cutting of red tape, which we've just heard so much about, that has produced a situation where no-one is held accountable for a major question of public safety affecting tens of thousands of buildings across this nation.

The minister, like her predecessors in the Morrison-Turnbull-Abbott governments, refused to acknowledge these facts, but they've been confirmed in inquiry after inquiry, which are available to those that have taken interest to actually understand these questions. The fundamental responsibility of government—and there can be no more fundamental responsibility of government—is to protect lives and to protect public safety. This is where the government has fundamentally failed, and I think its failure not to have a forward agenda is a matter that ought bring public condemnation, not applause.

This crisis is growing more acute. Last week, the Building Minister's Forum met in Sydney. The minister told the meeting, in an ABC interview, that the states were going to implement the recommendation of the latest review, which is the Shergold-Weir review into building regulations, which the forum itself had commissioned back in June 2017. This is a report that the government has had for 17 months. The minister sought to pass the buck to the states for the implementation of the recommendations. This is, of course, despite the fact that the government had signed off in 2017 to an intergovernmental agreement between the Commonwealth and the states and the territories—that is, the agreement which declares that it is the collective responsibility of the states and the Commonwealth to enforce the national building code. 'Collective responsibility' are the words used in that agreement.

At the forum's meeting, the minister triumphantly announced that she had produced an effective response to the crisis in the industry because, she says, the states had agreed to implement the Shergold-Weir recommendations. There had been no progress at that meeting last week. They had already agreed to that 12 months previously, and the communique for the forum's meeting in August 2018 outlines precisely that. It indicated the states and the Commonwealth were developing a paper to implement the reforms based on the recommendations of the Shergold-Weir report. In February this year the forum communique said:

Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to developing a joint response …

Last week they announced it all over again—except that they are even further away from producing actual details of any response. The meeting produced no solutions. There was no agreement on banning the use of flammable cladding in construction, despite the fact that the existing national code bans the use of that cladding in buildings higher than three storeys.

How is it then that this cladding is on tens of thousands of buildings across this country? There was no agreement on a national licencing scheme for building contractors. There was no response on the phoenixing of rogue builders or on a national registration of directors. There was no acknowledgment by the Commonwealth that it had responsibilities in this area. It was all said to be a matter for the states. So there was a catalogue of nothings. Like this government's forward agenda, it is a catalogue of nothings.

One only has to look at this briefly to understand that this is a situation whereby, as a result of what's developing in the insurance industry now, where there is rectification action being taken in some states, there are no surveyors to actually undertake that work. Surveyors can't get insurance because of the exemptions that have been imposed as part of the latest fix, which has been presented as the grand solution for the crisis that has emerged within the building industry. So in Victoria at the moment the exemptions in insurance policies mean the surveyors can't get coverage. They're not going to be exposed to the liabilities incurred in a privatised, deregulated inspection regime, so the cutting of red tape is not going to be the solution here.

The privatisation of the industry has meant there has been no accountability. No-one's been held accountable for the maintenance of safety standards. We're seeing people forced out of their homes and onto the streets because of the fires and because of the structural defects in the industry, and we have no idea when it will be safe for people to return. Thousands of buildings are encased in flammable cladding. In this city the airport is one of those. The new building at the airport is one of those buildings. People have bought into high-rise apartments in good faith, and they do not know who is responsible for fixing the buildings or who is going to pay for it. People don't know what their personal liability is going to be. What they do know is that the value of their homes is being irreparably reduced, and this is a government that wants to talk about improving home ownership.

It's not just flammable cladding here. What we have seen is inquiry after inquiry pointing out problems with water-proofing, sprinkler systems and structural defects in steel; non-conforming building products right throughout the industry for the installation of fire doors, firewalls, fire doorframes; lead in water pipes; imported brass plumbing components; non-compliant electrical cables.

The Victorian government has offered $300 million for these matters. Has the Commonwealth sought to provide any assistance on this? None whatsoever. The Victorian government will have to make up the shortfall by increasing charges on building permits. Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland have announced temporary measures to deal with the insurance problem, but these measures don't fix the problem. Of course, they go to removing some of the liability for the use of flammable cladding. The so-called solution of insurance problems defines away the reason why people need the insurance in the first place! It absolves certifiers from responsibility when the building is encased in what is effectively a petrol bomb. So it does nothing to solve the problem, which is the fundamental threat to public safety in this country.

The crisis in the building industry can't be overlooked or concealed, and the Commonwealth cannot evade its responsibilities by pointing the finger at someone else. I repeat: this is not just a state issue. This is collective responsibility, and the Commonwealth has signed document after document acknowledging that proposition. And yet in the media in this country we're constantly told that it's just a state problem and that the states should front up to it.

How weak is that? Unless this is exposed by the Labor Party we won't hear any more about it. That's what's happening. This is a tragedy, and the introduction of the system with the complementary legislation to push deregulation prevailed over good sense. This is a system based on a simple proposition that we could have a model built on an assumption that self-regulation could work. The so-called 'deeming to satisfy' provisions of the national building code have been standard practice throughout the industry. The evidence is overwhelming—absolutely overwhelming—of document fraud, product substitution and continued gross malpractice. But have we had any prosecutions? Even on matters involving direct breaches of the Commonwealth Customs Act, nothing!

What we've got here is their failure to provide a regulatory system in the industry with the resources needed to make the regulations effective. When government sought to privatise the building approval process, they made sure that the accountability mechanisms were taken away. The very people who signed off on these buildings are the same ones who are dependent on those that actually did the work, and therefore there is a fundamental conflict of interest. That is the fundamental problem with the way in which the codes actually operate at the moment—an inherent conflict of interest which is at the core of the deregulated system. And now we have a deregulated financial market fostered on our apartment and housing construction boom, and everyone pats everyone else on the back and pretends, of course, that we can blame somebody else when disputes arise.

During the boom, of course, they just onsell it—they hope—unless it catches fire. Despite the warnings of the fire brigades and the fire authorities around the country this allowed shoddy, unsafe products, including flammable cladding, to be used. The savings involved in this are what struck me as so amazing. They have been so small by comparison on a per square metre basis. But the cost to the country—not just the financial cost of repairing but the potential costs, given what we've seen in these overseas examples of fires in high-rise buildings—and the enormous potential loss of life strikes me as something we simply can't ignore.

The Lacrosse fire in Melbourne in 2014 brought it home to me just how serious this issue was, following of course what occurred in the United Kingdom with Grenfell. We've had the situation now where the Opal Tower in Western Sydney has been evacuated. We've had the Mascot Towers in Sydney and the Neo 200 building fire in Melbourne's CBD. And I repeat: it's not just cladding. We've had the good luck that no-one has been killed to this point, but the Grenfell fire, where 72 people were killed, demonstrated what the potential is.

This crisis has been documented meticulously. It is simply not good enough to say, 'Well, we didn't understand the implications of this in the period from 2014 onwards.' The Shergold-Weir review of building regulations was released in February last year. The findings were unequivocal. They declared the system was broken. And now we have a situation—what is it?—nearly 17 months later, when they'd said that their recommendations should be implemented within three years, where no action has been taken. The response has been to evade responsibility, just like all the other shoddy product suppliers.

What we've seen is people trying to hide behind the Constitution, with this government claiming the states are responsible for building regulation. The Commonwealth introduced the national—and I repeat: national—regulatory framework with the states. There is a national framework. It would not be a national framework without the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is responsible for the Australian standards process, which the system depends on.

The Senate has produced numerous reports on this matter and highlighted these issues. What we do know is that the states have made recommendations, but this government has failed to provide any support whatsoever. I know the minister keeps trying to avoid the responsibility here, but I repeat: the latest version of the agreement between the Commonwealth and states was signed by Minister Andrews's predecessor in December 2017. The agreement is quite clear:

Through this Agreement the Australian Government, the States and the Territories are facilitating the development of a more efficient, internationally competitive Building and Construction industry through reforms to regulation nationally—

Nationally. It's simply not enough to say that the agreement that regulates the relationships within the building industry is anything other than a collective responsibility—

This Agreement recognises that the States and Territories have primary responsibility for regulating Building and Construction

Yes, but it is still a collective responsibility. The responsibility is exercised collectively through the Building Ministers' Forum—

The respective Ministers of these Parties responsible for Building and Construction policy, known as the Building Ministers' Forum, are collectively—

I repeat: collectively—

responsible for the policies, decisions and actions to ensure the Building and Construction requirements meet the expectations of the community.

The agreement to which Minister Andrews is now bound does not allow for a cop-out that's so routinely become the pattern of public discourse in this country.

Professor Shergold and Ms Weir spoke to the ministers' forum when their report was released a year ago. Their report followed upon reports that had already been received, including the Wallace report of 2014 and the 2015 Lambert report. There were two pertinent Victorian Auditor-General's reports. There was, of course, the Victorian task force into aluminium cladding, which found that there'd been systemic rorting of the system—systemic rorting of the system.

Their recommendations—there are 24 of them—suggested that everyone in the industry had been consulted and that the states had agreed to them. Seventeen months ago they said to the ministers that they had to get this done within a three-year period. Nothing has happened. We now have class actions underway. We now have an insurance crisis. In fact, what's occurred since that time is the situation's become more complicated, as entire buildings have had to be evacuated and thousands of people have been put out on the street.

It comes down to this: the Commonwealth must accept its share of responsibility that it signed up to back in 1994 and repeatedly in other agreements since that time. The Morrison government must ensure the Australian community's expectation of safe and secure homes and workplaces are actually met. If this minister can't do the job then this matter should be dealt with by a COAG meeting of premiers and should be convened as a matter of urgency.

Instead of blathering about cutting red tape, this Prime Minister should insist that Australia has a national system of building regulations, a system in which all building practitioners are held accountable and proper standards are enforced. The Morrison government must ensure that the Australian community's expectation of safe and secure homes and workplaces are met. It's simply not acceptable to pass the buck and to try and avoid your responsibilities when so much is at stake.

The report was called Building confidence. We've failed to do that. (Time expired)

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before getting on to some remarks in address-in-reply, I do note that this is effectively the end of only the second full day of parliament of a new parliament with an extensive agenda, as we heard from the Governor-General just a few days ago. And yet what do we get from those opposite? We get stunts. We get arrogance. They didn't listen to the Australian people a few short weeks ago. They've forgotten already, if they ever took a lesson from what happened a few short weeks ago. We have seen stunts in this place and in the other place today aimed at delaying assistance to the hardworking men and women of rural and regional Australia, the hardworking small businesses of rural and regional Australia, those affected by drought.

Luckily, in my home state of WA, we had a pretty good season last year and, so far, even though the rains came a little bit late, we look like—touch wood—having a pretty reasonable season again. But those in the eastern states, particularly those in the home state of my colleague, Senator McGrath, have been suffering a terrible drought which is ongoing and continuing. One of the priorities of this government is to give assistance to those struggling rural communities affected by drought. And what do we get from those opposite? We get stunts and arrogance. We on this side have a long set of policy priorities. We have a significant agenda, not the least of which is helping those people struggling through the drought and that is certainly something we wish to progress through this parliament as quickly as possible. I would commend all in the other place and all senators to support those drought relief measures in the absolute most timely way they possibly can.

As the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and the finance minister have all acknowledged, there are some headwinds in the global economy that the Australian economy needs to face. We have the correct settings to face those headwinds. We have the ingenuity, the dynamism within our economy to face those headwinds, but they are there. They are acknowledged. They are very real. Dwelling investment is down. The iron ore price, which particularly affects our home state of Western Australia, is predicted to fall and that will obviously have a significant budgetary impact. It also has a significant impact on the men and women who work in that industry.

The metallurgical coal price is expected to fall as well. Obviously there are currently trade tensions in the globe which have the potential to negatively impact the Australian economy. That said, the settings and the fundamentals of the Australian economy are very good. The Australian economy grew by 2.7 per cent in the 2018 calendar year, faster than all of the other G7 nations with the exception of the United States. The wage price index, which is something those on the other side often talk about, is 2.3 per cent when inflation is 1.3 per cent. This is obviously a positive situation.

The budget has been turned around by $55 billion. The net impact of policy decisions on the payment side of the budget is $928 million, once offsetting spending reductions are taken into account. We're moving towards a net-positive position by the end of the decade and obviously there is a clear strategy in place now to pay off government net debt.

Spending growth has fallen, in fact, to half of what we inherited and is at the lowest level in 50 years—it's currently 1.9 per cent. The average annual growth in spending above inflation that we inherited from Labor was around 4 per cent. Spending to GDP is down to 24.6 per cent. Again, this is below the 25.4 per cent inherited from Labor and well below the 30-year average. Current revenue more than pays for our recurrent expenditure. Payments in the next financial year will be $4.2 billion lower than assumed, and payments over the 2019-20 forward estimates period will be $21 billion lower than assumed.

What do these settings, these fundamentals of the economy, allow this government to do? Those opposite, in carrying out their stunt this evening, say that the government hasn't got an agenda. Well, in less than two full days of parliament, we have got through this place a very significant tax relief package that will help hardworking Australians from all walks of life. How long is a week in politics? Normally, that phrase is used in the negative. When something goes wrong, we ask, 'How long is a week in politics?' This time, we can use it in the positive. In a week in politics, we heard the Governor-General's address. We heard it setting out the government's agenda, including a significant tax relief package. Within a week, it passed through this place and the other place and became law. We heard today in question time from Minister Cormann how many Australian taxpayers have already put their tax returns in for the last financial year in order to keep more of the hard-earned money that they receive in their pay packets.

In fact, from this year on, the government's tax relief plan will benefit more than 10 million Australian taxpayers earning up to $126,000 per year. From this year, we have reduced taxes for low- and middle-income earners. This tax relief will be immediately available: $1,080 for singles and $2,160 for couples and families. So this is a government that is already delivering on the promises that we took to the Australian people just a few short weeks ago—promises that were recognised by the Australian people and were valued by the Australian people to the point where they voted us back into government on the back of those commitments.

This government has now legislated to increase the 19 per cent tax bracket from $41,000 to $45,000 and increase the low-income tax offset from $645 to $700 from 2023. In 2024-25, the 32.5 per cent tax rate will be reduced to 30 per cent and, therefore, will abolish one tax rate altogether—94 per cent of all taxpayers will pay no more than 30 per cent.

There were accusations from those opposite during the election campaign—they seem to have struck this phrase out of their lexicon post-election—about targeting the 'the top end of town'. But, in fact, when you look at people who are within that under-$126,000 group, who do we find? We find heavy diesel mechanics earning, on average, $121,000 per annum; hardworking electricians in Western Australia earning, on average, $97,000; senior police constables—very hardworking senior police constables—earning, on average, around $92,000; and senior teachers in Western Australia earning around $109,000 a year. These aren't the top end of town; these are hardworking Australians who deserve to keep more of their own hard-earned money. These are aspirational Australians—people who want to have a go, who want to get ahead and who want to provide a better future for their children. They're not the top end of town. They're average Australians, and they're the average Australians who rejected the politics of envy that Labor promulgated and rejected the politics of dislike of aspiration that those opposite promulgated during the election campaign. This is a significant part of the reason why those Australians supported this government and returned this government to power, allowing us, in just our first two full days of parliament, to deliver the most significant tax relief package since the Howard government.

Debate interrupted.