Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

On the question of cost of living, I am glad he has raised it because Australians have avoided the opposition leader’s ‘great big new tax on everything’, which he was intending to impose by increasing company tax that would have increased prices at shops—at Woolworths, at Coles—and it would have put a burden on working families.

What the government has done, and will continue to do, is to act to ease cost-of-living pressures on working families. That is why we have lowered tax, for example, so that a person on $50,000 a year is now paying $1,750 less in tax than they were in 2007-08—that is, 18 per cent less tax. We have increased pensions; we have introduced the education tax refund, and we are intending to extend that so that people can claim against the cost of school uniforms; we have increased the childcare tax rebate to help take the pressure off working families using child care; we have introduced the teen dental plan to help with the expensive cost of dentistry; and we as a government will introduce the promised changes to family tax benefit A to assist families with the cost of teenagers, which would increase by up to $4,000 the amount of family tax benefit that families receive; we will move to pay the child care tax rebate fortnightly; we will introduce paid parental leave from 1 January next year; we will make tax returns easier, including an automatic deduction; and we will provide tax relief for savings accounts. So any time the Leader of the Opposition wants to talk to me about cost of living I am more than happy to do so.

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