Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The President has received a letter from Senator Dean Smith:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

Australians are poorer under Labor's cost of living crisis, and Labor's third Budget will again fail unless it restores our standard of living by taming inflation, takes pressure off the prices of essentials and delivers affordable energy; creates opportunity so small businesses are rewarded for their effort, and young Australians have the chance to own a home; and restores Budget discipline by re-introducing a tax-to-GDP cap and deliver a structural surplus not a windfall surplus.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The test for Labor in tonight's federal budget is a simple one, and it's also a familiar one. Will the budget tonight hurt or help Australian families? Will the budget tonight hurt or help Australian businesses? The harsh reality at the moment is that Australian families and Australian businesses are already reeling under the pain and the hurt of Labor's two previous budgets. These budgets have made Australians poorer and they've made Australia weaker. After a commitment to wage a war on inflation, inflation remains perilously high. After promises to make Australian families better off, families are struggling under the weight of having to find an extra $24,000 a year on an average home loan in order to meet escalating interest rate costs. Families are struggling to keep their heads above water. The data points in the economy make it very clear: things have got worse for Australian families under Labor; they've not got better. But Australian families don't need to look at the data, because they feel it and they see it for themselves when they go to fill up their car with petrol and when they're shopping, walking through the supermarket aisles.

So when Anthony Albanese says, as he has over the last few days, that this will be a traditional Labor budget, Australian families and Australian businesses should be alert and they should be alarmed, because we know what a traditional Labor budget means. It means higher taxes and it means higher spending. Higher taxes and higher spending budgets are bad for Australian families, and higher spending budgets will do nothing to tame the war that we need to wage on inflation.

Yesterday there emerged a very important matter—indeed, a credibility gap in regard to what the Treasurer, Dr Chalmers, has been saying and what the Reserve Bank has been saying. Yesterday Dr Chalmers said that, under the government's predictions, it expects inflation to return to the RBA range of two to three per cent by the end of this year. The government believes that inflation will fall to 2.75 per cent by December this year. In contrast, the Reserve Bank of Australia is saying that it expects inflation to stay at 3.8 per cent until the end of this year and not fall to three per cent until December next year. This is a serious credibility issue for Dr Chalmers when he stands up in the House of Representatives tonight and presents this Labor government's third budget. Dr Chalmers is not just the Treasurer of this country; Dr Chalmers is now the king of wishful thinking. So tonight, when the Treasurer gets to his feet, he has some very important explaining to do.

We should be very mindful that inflation, which is ruining household incomes, which is ruining household savings and which is making life very difficult for small businesses in our country, will not be mitigated, will not fall, unless the government has the courage to show some constraint—not just some constraint but real, genuine constraint—when it comes to government spending, because the reality now is that inflation is still perilously high, the government is losing the war on inflation and the commentators are telling us that inflation is now home grown, meaning it's the government's responsibility, and it's sticky, meaning it's not going away in a hurry. Labor's third budget, I fear, will hurt Australian families and hurt Australian businesses more.

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Talk about a reality gap, Senator Smith! Tonight's budget will be a budget for the times. It will be a budget that provides a historic package of cost-of-living relief for Australians. It will be a budget that charts a path forward for a strong economic future for our country. And it will do all of this, despite what Senator Smith just said, while putting downward pressure on inflation—inflation that has already halved on our watch. It will do that while returning additional revenue to the budget bottom line and generating a second budget surplus.

In this budget, like the last budget and the one before it, we will show what the opposition hates us to show—that we are the better economic managers for this nation. We will provide the relief for the challenges that Australians face today, we will provide a path to the jobs of tomorrow and we will show the fiscal discipline that is needed to put downward pressure on inflation right now.

Those opposite couldn't produce one budget surplus in their nine years in office, let alone two. We know they had the 'back in black' mugs printed. We know they enjoyed puffing on their cigars while cutting programs that Australians rely on. But what they couldn't do was produce a budget surplus; they never delivered one, let alone two. We will do that at the same time we're providing the cost-of-living relief that Australians need—cost-of-living relief that those opposite have relentlessly opposed from the benches opposite.

The centrepiece of our cost-of-living relief will be the tax cut that every single Australian will receive on 1 July. Again, on 1 July every single Australian taxpayer will receive a tax cut. Every single person: every single nurse, every single truckie, every single low-income worker and every single middle-income worker will receive a tax cut under our plan. We want to see Australians earning more and keeping more of what they earn. Wages are already growing on our watch, at the fastest rate in over a decade. That's because we've proudly supported a boost to the minimum wage—a significant boost. We've proudly supported a boost to the pay of our essential but undervalued aged-care workers. I'm proud that there's going to be more to come in tonight's budget to support our essential and undervalued care economy workers even further. We want to see strong wages in this country. We want to see real wages growth returning, and that is exactly what we're seeing.

We have already delivered substantial support to the Australian people, and we will deliver more tonight; we know they need that. In Medicare we've made historic investments in bulk-billing, urgent care clinics and cheaper medicines, and there will be more tonight. We want a country where all that Australians need to turn up and get the health care that they need is their Medicare card, not their credit card.

There will be more fee-free TAFE in the budget tonight as well. We'll be training more Australians for the jobs of the future. And there will be $3 billion in student debt wiped for over three million Australians. We want Australians to get the education they want for the jobs they want too. That's why we'll also be addressing placement poverty for students in nursing, social work and teaching. Fee-free TAFE, HECS-HELP debt reform and placement payments are all going to help Australians get ready for the jobs of the future today.

Our budget will have a lot more to say about a future made right here in Australia as well, and a lot more about those jobs of the future. We want to seize those opportunities for Australia to become a renewable energy superpower and to make more of what we need right here in Australia.

Tonight we will be delivering more of the cost-of-living relief that people need right now today, starting with a tax cut for every single Australian. We will deliver the investment for the country that we need to build for tomorrow as well, with more jobs, more of what we need made right here in Australia and more homes that people need as well. And we will return more revenue to the bottom line, and a second surplus.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down his third budget tonight, many Australians simply don't care. All the talk about surpluses, deficits, subsidies and balance of payments is very low in the average Australian's priorities today. The biggest budget concern across dinner tables is skyrocketing mortgage costs, rents, grocery bills, insurance premiums and power bills. Australians don't need Treasurer Chalmers to tell them times are tough; they're living through tough times. Unfortunately, this budget shows the government isn't coming to help; in fact, to compensate for its poor decisions it's going to have to have its hand deeper in your pocket, taxing more of your salary for years to come.

Let's step through the budget and what it means for Australians. Firstly, the big headline: Labor wants everyone to know the budget is in surplus—$9.8 billion. It sounds good, doesn't it? Anyone who's ever had their bills laid out on the dining room table knows a good budget needs more money coming in than going out. Unfortunately, this budget surplus is terrifyingly small, given that fairies have kissed Treasurer Chalmers with good luck.

The government has won the biggest lottery prize we could ever have hoped for, yet it has just a tiny surplus. It would be like a family winning division 1 of Powerball and having $100 left over at the end of the year—and calling it a win! There should be rivers of gold flowing into the budget. Instead we have a miserable trickle because Labor doesn't resist spending every bit of its lottery winnings.

Commodity prices for our exports like oil, gas, coal, metal minerals and agricultural produce have all been near or at record highs over the previous few years. That means huge amounts of extra money flowed into Treasurer Chalmers's budget. 'Oil', 'gas' and 'coal' are all dirty words to this Labor government and the Greens, and they're too embarrassed to admit they have, in large part, saved the budget.

The second lottery win is the Australian workers. They're working more jobs, longer hours and harder than ever. All of the extra work is reflected by the record-low unemployment rate. That means more taxes from hardworking Australians are going into the budget coffers than ever before—a record. That's the story of this budget: three years of some of the largest tax intakes government has ever recorded, yet Labor can only squeak out the tiniest of surpluses.

Despite Australians working multiple jobs for more hours, they're still going backwards because of inflation. Inflation is the secret debilitating stealth tax on all Australians. It's the reason Australia had the largest collapse of disposable income in the OECD. If you feel like you're going backwards, it's because you are.

The only way to get ourselves out of this infrastructure mess is by spending on productive assets that allow Australia to make more here. We need to raise our productive capacity. We need more dams so that Australians can have more food and exports. But don't expect to see any dams in Labor's budget. We need cheaper electricity so that small businesses can thrive and hire people in their local communities. Instead, Labor will continue to throw us down the path of the net zero pipedream, which is guaranteed to bring higher energy prices, whether Australians pay for it on their power bill or with more taxes.

Unfortunately, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Labor-Greens are a uniparty on net zero—all united in their commitment to kill our electricity grid. We need nation-building projects like the Iron Boomerang project to make millions of tonnes of the world's best quality steel right here in our country.

One thing I can guarantee is that there won't be enough action on immigration in this budget. The Prime Minister has leaked that they expect net overseas migration to come in at 300,000 next year—300,000! This is a horrifyingly large number. It's excessive. Prior to COVID there were 1.9 million visa holders likely to require housing in the country. There are now 2.3 million plus 400,000 tourists. That's causing the terrible rental and housing crisis. Now the government wants to make that 300,000 people worse again. Where will these people sleep, Prime Minister?

That sums up what we can expect from this Labor budget: more Australians sleeping in cars, under bridges, in tents and in caravans; first home buyers destroyed by their mortgage repayments, while inflation runs out of control; small businesses being strangled by power prices. Does this sound good? This is hopeless. There are many more shocking stories of how the Australian dream has been ruined by decades of the Liberals-Nationals-Labor-Greens uniparty, acting together to implement the agenda of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.

A better way is possible. A much better way is possible, and One Nation will reveal how in our response to the budget this week.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend Senator Smith for putting forward this matter of public importance, because it touches on the two failures of this government. Firstly, the government has reverted to the traditional Labor approach of spending too much money and therefore needing to tax the Australian people too heavily. Secondly, Labor has failed on housing—failed to house young Australians and failed to provide pathways for people to own their own houses. I don't think I need to sit here and give the Senate an address on how the government has failed on these issues, because people know; people don't need to be convinced.

But, on the issue of taxation, it is the case that the government has been forced to raise a series of new taxes to pay for its new spending. It has had to increase income taxes. You see the hilarious presentation of the stage 3 recalibration as a tax cut, when what you see is the reinsertion of the 37c tax bracket and, therefore, the reemergence of bracket creep as a permanent feature of our tax system. Who would have thought, when we came into this parliament when it started almost two years ago, that we would see the parliament reintroduce a tax bracket which was abolished because it was killing aspiration? The 37c threshold is an aspiration killer. If you do an extra shift or do longer hours or do a second job, you are now going to pay higher taxes because of the reinsertion of this tax bracket.

You will see higher personal income taxes under Labor. You will see higher taxes on superannuation. But we don't know how these new taxes will apply to the Prime Minister or to his cabinet colleagues. And then you will see new taxes on franking credits. You see higher taxes across the board to pay for this new spending. This comes from a Labor Party which laughably promised no new taxes.

The issue of housing is perhaps more personal and more acute for many Australians, because I think a lot of Australians expected that the government would have done better here. What you've seen is a flatlining of construction, fewer houses being built and a large increase in immigration. That has meant that fewer Australians are able to access a home.

What you've seen from the government are callous schemes. Help to Buy, which was the centrepiece of their housing policy from the election, is based on a state scheme that no-one wants to use. Very few Australians use the state based shared-equity schemes. So federal Labor goes to the election saying, 'This is the centrepiece of our housing plan.' Bearing in mind that the government itself is promising 1.2 million houses over the next five years—targets it will never meet—the centrepiece of its plan is Help to Buy, which provides 10,000 places. It is a pimple on the elephant's backside, at best. That is their offering on housing: Help to Buy and a failure on the housing targets. Premier Minns in New South Wales laughs and laughs at Mr Albanese and Dr Chalmers and says, 'We will never meet these housing targets in Sydney; we will never meet the New South Wales housing targets.' You've got wall-to-wall Labor governments, and you can't build the houses. The government programs here are absolutely ridiculous.

What you don't see from this government is an interest in trying to tilt the scales in favour of first home buyers. You don't see any Treasury minister discussing whether there is a high cost of regulation that's impacting the banks' ability to make a loan. It's pretty hard to get a house if you can't get a mortgage, I would have thought. There are cobwebs there; there is nothing there. Then, of course, what you never ever hear them discuss is what role super could play in helping first home buyers get into a house. The reason is that they are the party of vested interests. As Alfred Deakin said a hundred years ago, the problem with Labor is that it is beholden to vested interests, to the people that run the preselections, support the Labor party and write the policy. The policy they never want to see is opening up super for first home buyers, because they want the donations into the Labor Party. It's disgusting.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who remembers 'Back in black' and the mugs? We all remember that. We remember all the promises to deliver a surplus that those opposite made when they were in government. But what did they do? They failed on every occasion. And the good senator's contribution there once again—'Let everyone raid their superannuation; we don't want to have a secure retirement'—is a wrong, wrong approach. We're not a government that makes promises that we're not prepared to deliver on, because we have delivered on every single election promise that we've made to date.

Tonight, Treasurer Jim Chalmers will deliver a surplus—a second surplus under the Albanese Labor government—of some $9.3 billion for this financial year. Tonight's budget will focus on easing the cost-of-living pressure felt by Australians, combating inflation and laying the foundations for future growth in our economy and our labour force. The three biggest factors shaping this budget are global uncertainty, persistent cost-of-living pressures and slowing growth.

Those opposite would have you believe that the government has been sitting idle, but, in fact, we haven't. We have stopped inflation; we have turned the corner on that. When we came into government it was six-plus per cent inflation—it now has a three in front of it. We are actually taking steps to ease the cost of living—we have already, and we have announced some of them. But there are already better wages, and so the tax cuts which will come into effect for Australian taxpayers on 1 July will mean even more for Australians. We have delivered cheaper child care, cheaper medicines and 60-day dispensing of medication. We've invested in free-free TAFE. We've given energy bill relief. Medicare urgent care clinics are already up and running, and in my home state of Tasmania we have four of them, and they are going along very well—in fact, they have been extremely popular. We have tripled the bulk-bill incentive to GPs so it makes it cheaper to see your doctor. We have been more generous with the paid parental leave and leave entitlements to close the gender pay gap, and plan to get more people into housing across this country. We have done all of this in two years.

You had 10 years, and what did you do but leave $1 trillion in debt? You left us with a huge debt. You had not invested in housing at all. You had done nothing but have a policy of keeping wages low. That's what your plan was. That was your policy—to keep wages low. We've got them moving again. We're easing the cost-of-living pressures in a real and meaningful way for all Australians.

Like the government's first two budgets, tonight's budget will be responsible, and it suits the times. Helping people with the cost of living is our government's No. 1 priority, and the centrepiece of our new assistance will be a tax cut for every one of the nation's 13.6 million taxpayers. That is everyone, and most of those will get more than they would have got under the Morrison government's planned tax cuts. In fact, people are not only going to get more; they are going to actually get a tax cut, which your previous government failed to acknowledge. For a family on an average household income of around $130,000, with one partner earning $80,000 and the other earning $50,000, their combined tax cut will be over $2,600, which is about $50 a week and $1,600 more than they would have got under the old Liberal Morrison government's plan.

For those opposite and for Mr Dutton, who want Australians to work longer for less, their policy was all about keeping wages low, whereas our policy is to ensure that people get paid for their work and that for what they get paid they keep more of that in their pocket. That's what our policy is, and that's what will be reflected when Dr Chalmers delivers his third budget tonight. I believe this will be a good Labor budget which will yet again prove that we are responsible economic managers. We are very mindful of any pressure on inflation, but we will deliver a surplus and we won't leave any Australian behind.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the matter of public importance put forward by my colleague Senator Dean Smith. I also acknowledge the work that he has done on the Cost of Living Select Committee, which has revealed that things have gone from bad to very bad to even worse under this Labor government. 'Homegrown Jimflation', as described by the Daily Telegraph, has been eating away at the standard of living in our country, with Australians enduring a per capita recession that nobody in this government wants to admit or talk about.

Disposable income in this country is down by 7½ per cent. This is a huge loss of income at a time when fuel, energy, housing, groceries, insurance and everything—including, literally, the kitchen sink—costs more. In the Sydney Morning Herald today there was an article referencing the Commonwealth Bank insights from April. This article says that, just in the last 12 months, April to April—a year-on-year change—education has gone up 10.8 per cent, utilities have gone up nine per cent, motor vehicle costs are up 3½ per cent and insurance is up 9.6 per cent. These are increases in the last year. Health is up 6.1 per cent, household services are up 4.5 per cent, communication and digital services are up two per cent, transport is up 4.7 per cent and recreation is up 2.7 per cent. This is extraordinary.

Australians are struggling under this government and its inflationary policies which currently see inflation sitting at 3.6 per cent, almost double the RBA's target band of one to two per cent. It is tipped to stay higher for longer. What does that mean? That means that interest rates are not coming down any time soon. Australians are suffering under these decades-high interest rates. There have been 12 rate rises since Labor came into power in this country. This has meant that many Australian families and small businesses haven't been able to put food on the table or keep a roof over their heads or it has meant that they have had to close their family business.

What has this government done about it? This government has delegated the responsibility of managing inflation to the Reserve Bank. What is the lever that the Reserve Bank has to use in order to manage inflation? Increasing interest rates. That's placing the entire burden of managing inflation in this country on the shoulders of Australians with a mortgage. That's who's carrying the burden. It's not large corporations, not large institutions and not this government but Australians with a mortgage. That is entirely unacceptable.

Think for a moment about young Australians who believe that no matter how hard they work they will never be able to own their own home. That is entirely unacceptable. Think for a moment about young Australians who scrimped and saved in order to get a deposit together, going back 18 months or two years, and finally believed that they had succeeded in achieving the Australian dream of owning their own home. Those 12 successive interest rate rises have now turned that dream into a living nightmare as they attempt to cut costs to be able to continue to keep their home. Do you know what the primary cost that Australians are cutting in this cost-of-living crisis? It's food. They are reducing the amount of food that they buy. It is a complete and utter shame that Australians are putting less in their shopping trolley and buying less food because their electricity, petrol, mortgage, rent and all of their other costs have gone through the roof. That is a shame on this government. What makes the situation even more egregious is that this government stands here and pretends that it is offering some kind of cost-of-living relief to Australians.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the discussion has expired.