Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) | Hansard source

I'm really genuinely so pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024 and to talk about how our Labor government is going to deliver Albo's tax cuts and what this will mean for my Hotham community.

I have been a member of parliament now for 10 years, and, in that time, I have of course engaged frequently with my community, talking to them about issues that matter to them. Over those 10 years, whenever you do a street stall or you're doing your shopping in the supermarket, people come up and talk to you about what's going on for them. Usually, the things that they talk to you about are really varied. It'll be an experience they're having with a kid who's trying to get into the NDIS. It'll be something they're dealing with in the healthcare system. It'll be an issue that they're dealing with in early education. But I can tell you one thing for every member of parliament in this chamber: when we engage with our constituents today, we hear about the cost of living. That is the first, second and third order of priority, and there is daylight until the next issue gets raised with you.

We hear about it in a variety of ways. I talk to parents who just cannot afford to buy the groceries they need for their families. I talk to parents who are struggling terribly with rents and people who can't afford to fill their car up with petrol to go to work every day. These are real things that are really happening in my community in Hotham, and today our government is doing something serious and real to help those families, and I'm proud of that. I talk to my constituents, and they raise the cost of living, and they do it again and again. My message to my constituents today is: 'We hear you. Our Prime Minister hears you.' That's why we have re-engineered these tax cuts, and we are focussing those benefits on low- and middle-income households right across my electorate and our country.

I want my constituents to understand a few simple things about the tax cuts. The first thing is that every single taxpayer in Hotham will get a tax cut on 1 July, and 90 per cent of the people that I represent in parliament are going to be better off because of the changes that our Prime Minister has made. I hear derisory words around the parliament about what this will mean for families in my electorate, and I think it is snobbish and pathetic, because the truth is that a hundred bucks will make a huge amount of difference to some of the families in my community. When you put it together, we are talking about a lot of families in my community that will be thousands of dollars better off a year. Liberals born with a silver spoon in their mouths might find that that's not a lot of money, and for their constituents and some people in their communities maybe that's accurate. It's not for my community. Thousands of dollars extra in their pockets a month means a hell of a lot to families in my community that can't afford to buy groceries anymore. For a cleaner in Clayton, a nurse in Noble Park or a mechanic in Mulgrave, this is going to help them get back on track and pay the bills at the end of the month.

I've been a member of parliament for 10 years. It is not that often, honestly, that I can stand in this chamber and say that I am doing something good that will benefit every single person in my electorate. But today I can say that, and I can say that because of a decision made by our Prime Minister, and I'm really proud of that. A nurse who works at Monash hospital in Clayton will be able to keep more than $1,500 a year in that pay packet of theirs. A teacher living in East Bentleigh and working in one of our incredible local schools is going to be $1,400 a year better off. A truck driver living in Springvale South, who's getting up at the crack of dawn, getting behind the wheel and delivering food and logistics that we need all over our great state, will keep an extra $1,300 to make ends meet. An average family in my electorate will be twice as better off than they would have been under the coalition's tax cuts. That's the power of having a government that actually listens, cares and gets on with the job of making a change that will help the people we represent in this parliament.

We've had a pretty interesting sitting fortnight, and I think you are starting to see emerge two really clear pictures of the approaches that the two main parties of government have towards what's going on in our country right now. For the people who sit on the other side of the chamber, the Liberals and the Nationals, it's all about opposing things that might help the families we represent. It's all about trying to make people work longer for less. What we've seen is the ultimate contortionist operation over there with something that's going to benefit 84 per cent of people. A hundred per cent of taxpayers are going to get a tax cut, and the people who sit opposite me, who pretend to represent their constituents, contorted themselves into knots for weeks before they said that they would come forward and support the legislation. In fact, their instinctive response to this was to say: 'We're going to wind it back. We're going to increase taxes for people in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.' It's absolutely ridiculous.

Don't forget what we're seeing on industrial relations, where we are making real strides and seeing real wages growth for the first time in a long time for families around this country. Again, the coalition comes in and says that they want to roll back the changes that we're making. One of the first things they're going to do is to roll back those changes. The Liberals want you to work longer for less; we want you to earn more and keep more of what you earn. As we go through the rest of this term in parliament, Mr Speaker, I think you'll see that increasingly played out in the public policy conversation.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope you won't mind if, on indulgence, I very briefly address another matter. We have had very serious natural disasters affect Victoria in the last couple of days. In particular, incredibly severe storms have ravaged the south-east of Melbourne overnight. I've been speaking with constituents in my community. There are trees down everywhere. Some of the houses are flattened, cars have been destroyed and, of course, the vast majority of my community is without power right now. My own household has lost power, and I only share that to say we're living that with you. My husband has been sending me pictures of the family eating dinner by candlelight. Their local school is seriously damaged.

I want to say something quickly to kids who lived through this yesterday in their classrooms. I talked to my son, who's in grade 2, and he described what was an absolutely terrifying experience of living through that storm in a classroom environment where the children were really upset and really scared. I just want to say to those children that I'm sorry that you had to go through that experience.

Please know that the federal government will be working closely with the state government to do everything we can to help support and protect our community and to help with what is going to be an absolutely massive clean-up for our south-eastern suburbs.

Finally, I say to our emergency workers, our police, our SES, our firies and our sparkies, who are trying to bring the power back online: we are so grateful for the work that you do. These incidents are really hard, but they bring out the best in Australians. I want to thank my beautiful community and just let you know that I'm here using the voice that you've given me in federal parliament. Thanks, Mr Deputy Speaker.

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