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

The Australian people can always trust this government to make the right decisions for the right reason, to front up and own those decisions, to explain those decisions and to focus on their needs. Your leader was out over the summer stoking division and calling for Woolworths to be boycotted—remember that?—and threatening the jobs of 200,000 Australians. While he was wandering around doing that, we were focused on the things that matter to the Australian people: how do we provide them with cost-of-living relief, when they need it, as soon as we can? When we took that decision, we fronted up, we owned it, we explained it, and we will continue to do so.

We took that decision for the right reasons. It wasn't, as some might have said, that we went in with our eyes open that this was changing our position. It wasn't an easy decision. We looked at it carefully but it became increasingly clear that this was a real way we could make a difference, with 11½ million Australians getting a bigger tax cut and every Australian taxpayer getting a tax cut—and you are backing it. You accept that it is the right policy for the right time. It's distracted you from having to follow the scare campaigns and the politics of division because you're having to back in something that is right. This is the right policy for the right economic circumstances. It will make a difference in household budgets, and we back it absolutely.