Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the 2025-26 additional estimates appropriations bills known as AEs. These bills, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2025-2026, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2025-2026 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2025-2026, are appropriations that are necessary for the operation of government. They underpin the Albanese Labor government's expenditure decisions made since the 2025-26 budget that relate to that financial year, including decisions made in the MYEFO.

Firstly, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) provides funding to support a range of important measures. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water received $2.9 billion, predominantly to continue to support the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which cuts the cost of solar home batteries by 30 per cent so that more people can access it. This is because the program has been a roaring success with huge take-up, especially in outer suburban and regional areas like mine. In fact, as of yesterday, 250,000 home batteries have been installed across the country since the program started in July last year. In my electorate alone, around 2,000 households, small businesses and community groups have installed solar batteries—the fourth highest take-up in Queensland—to lower their emissions and their power bills. This has doubled the battery capacity of our grid, which is good for household power bills and cost of living, and good for the stability of the entire energy system as well.

In the Climate Change and Energy portfolio, we have also committed $1.1 billion for the Cleaner Fuels Program, amongst other measures supporting the government's Net Zero Plan. In the environment space, the legislation provides funding for the government's Local Environmental Projects Program, which is protecting and improving our environment and heritage. One of those projects is the $1.2 million Chuwar Koala and Native Fauna Conservation Park, which will establish a koala rehabilitation centre and outdoor education hub in Ipswich, in my electorate. This is one of the local commitments I made during the 2025 election campaign. It will allow local charity Goodness Enterprises to partner with koala carers, university researchers and experts to rehabilitate injured koalas and release them into the wild. It's a fantastic initiative that will support local koala health and education and protect this iconic species for years to come in our local area.

In addition, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) allocates $1.5 billion to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing for various programs to improve the wellbeing and social and economic participation of people with a disability; continue to ensure access to medicines; deliver evidence-based health policy; improve access to comprehensive and coordinated healthcare; and protect the health and safety of the Australian community. The department will also receive $101 million to support the government's strengthening Medicare reforms, where bulk-billing incentives are now paid to GPs for every patient they bulk-bill and fully bulk-billed practices will receive an additional payment.

Building on our record $8.5 billion investment in Medicare last year, this has been a gamechanger in my community and around the country. In just three months, the bulk-billing rates for all Australians have jumped to 81.4 per cent nationwide, the largest quarterly jump in 20 years outside the pandemic. Australians can now access 3,400 Medicare bulk-billing practices across the country, and the numbers continue to grow every week. Almost 1,300 of these practices were previously mixed billing, and, thanks to the government's delivery, around 96 per cent of Australians are now living within 20 minutes drive of a registered Medicare bulk-billing practice. In my electorate of Blair, new figures show the number of bulk-billing and GP practices has almost doubled to 23, from 13, since November. This is not just about access to health care; it's a vital cost-of-living issue for many people in my community.

The appropriations bills provide funding in 2025-26 for other key Medicare election commitments made during the 2025 federal election, including 1800MEDICARE. This is a $204.5 million investment to provide a free 24/7 health advice line and afterhours GP telehealth service, backed by Medicare, which was launched on 1 January this year. It builds on the former Healthdirect services, expands them to every state and territory and, like our local Medicare urgent care clinics in Ipswich and Goodna, will further take pressure off our hospitals. This is great for my home state of Queensland, where all Healthdirect services were not previously available.

The AEs funding in these bills also supports the government's latest cheaper medicines reforms. As of 1 January general patients now pay no more than $25 for a PBS script. The last time a PBS medicine cost no more than $25 was in 2004, over 20 years ago. This is a more than 20 per cent cut in the maximum cost of PBS medicines, and, for patients in my electorate, it means more than 42,000 additional cheaper scripts are expected to be dispensed on average each year, saving locals in my community more than $1.5 million. Pensioners and concession cardholders will continue to benefit from the freeze to the cost of their PBS medicines, with the cost frozen at its current level of $7.70 until 2030. This builds on previous reforms, which have allowed residents in Blair to save around $9.5 million on cheaper medicines on more than 1.3 million scripts, with savings set to grow following the expansion of medicines eligible for a 60-day script, a fantastic outcome.

Lastly in the health space, Appropriations Bill (No. 3) 2025-2026 commits $1.1 billion for more free mental health services and additional training places. For example, this supports the government's new Medicare Mental Health Check In, which launched in January, offering a free online tool for Australians experiencing mild mental health challenges. This is part of our commitment to ensure Australians can receive free mental health care when they need it and will complement great local services in my community like the Ipswich Medicare Mental Health Centre in the Ipswich CBD, which I visited recently with the Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. As part of our $1 billion mental health commitment, we'll deliver a new headspace centre in Redbank Plains, the biggest suburb in Ipswich, to assist the growing numbers of people aged 12 to 25 years in an area seeking assistance. It's a very multicultural area in Ipswich. This was an important shared local commitment of mine at the last election with the Speaker, the member for Oxley, and I'm very proud of it.

In the wake of the horrific Bondi terrorist attack in December, the Albanese government is doing everything possible to keep Australians safe and strengthen social cohesion. As part of the additional estimates process, the Department of Home Affairs will receive $881 million to implement various programs to ensure Australia's security, prosperity and unity by safeguarding our domestic interests from crises and threats, supporting the government's response to the antisemitic Bondi attack and delivering on the government's 2025 election commitment to maintain Australia's cohesive, multicultural society.

As part of this, we've committed $25 million for community language schools, to help students to stay connected to language and culture—including for the Vedanta Centre in Springfield Lakes in my electorate, to support free community Hindi classes. And a shout-out to the Ripley Nepalese community and the Nepalese Association of Queensland—I was there last Sunday for the launch of the Nepalese language class's first session in Ripley Central State School, and I look forward to the Ripley Nepalese community applying for funding under this particular program in the future.

As part of the joint local commitment at the last election with the Speaker and member for Oxley, the Albanese government is investing $5.5 million for a House of India community and cultural centre in the booming Greater Springfield area. This will provide a home for the growing Indian community in Queensland and also serve as a common community asset for the Ipswich and West Moreton region. On top of this, we've committed $700,000 to upgrade the YMCA Springfield Central Community Centre, which will have shared community spaces for multicultural groups to utilise for everything from religious services to sporting activities.

Appropriation Bill (No. 4) provides Treasury with over $325 million to provide loans to Housing Australia to support social and affordable housing projects as part of the Housing Australia Future Fund, or HAFF, including HAFF round 3, which was announced in the 2025-26 MYEFO. This is the largest HAFF round yet and will see more than 21,000 new social and affordable homes delivered across the country. It's a really important part of our $45 billion plan to build more homes, get Australians into homeownership and give renters a better deal. That's why I've encouraged community housing providers operating across the Ipswich and Somerset region in my electorate to apply for funding through this opportunity so we can meet the housing needs of one of the fastest-growing regions in the country.

We're also supporting first home buyers in the MYEFO, with $10 billion to deliver up to 100,000 homes for sale only to first home buyers, and there is $98 million to fast-track the qualifications of 6,000 tradies and establish a new national training centre in new energy skills—a great initiative. These measures build on our other initiatives to support housing supply and affordability, including expanding the Home Guarantee Scheme, which has been hugely popular in my electorate and has already helped many people into homeownership. Since the Albanese government came to power, almost 5,000 locals in Blair have been helped into homeownership thanks to this scheme—one of the highest rates of take-up across the country. Now we're helping more young people and first home buyers to achieve their dream of homeownership sooner, through our five per cent deposit scheme, through Help to Buy and by reserving 100,000 homes for first home buyers.

Looking ahead, the government is working hard to put together our fifth budget. There will be a major focus on inflation in the near term and on productivity over the medium term, and also on making our economy more resilient at a time of extreme global uncertainty—and we only have to see the media reports from the last few days. Developments in the Middle East are an important reminder of the volatility in the global economy right now, and we're closely monitoring the implications for oil prices and our produce.

I've just come from a meeting with Dean Goode, the CEO of Kilcoy Global Foods, and he was telling me about the issues they're going to face not just with the potential increase in energy costs but with getting their produce into the Middle East. They're a big company—one of the biggest meat-processing companies in the country—and they've got two centres in my electorate: one in Kilcoy and one in Coominya. They employ over 2,000 people across the region, so this has a big, big implication for my electorate.

Annual inflation was steady in January—much lower than we inherited, but already higher than we would like because of a combination of temporary and more persistent pressures on our economy. That's why we're helping with the cost of living in many ways that those opposite don't support. That's why we've improved the budget in ways that they're incapable of. We found $114 billion in savings, we've delivered two budget surpluses, we've got our debt down by $176 billion and we improved the budget position in the MYEFO in December.

We know there's a lot more work to be done. We're strengthening the budget at the same time as we're cutting income taxes for 14 million Australians, including 80,000 taxpayers in my electorate of Blair. Because of our combined tax cuts, the average taxpayer will keep an extra $50 a week to help with the cost of living. Of course, if the new leader of the opposition had his way, Australians would not be getting this tax cut this year or next year, and the deficits would be bigger in both years as well. We saw that in the policies of the coalition at the last federal election. I think he was the worst minister in the Morrison government—the worst shadow treasurer in living memory. Fancy going to an election pledging to increase the size of the deficit and opposing tax cuts for average Australians! That is an extraordinary collection of policy failures, and we've seen that recently with their non-released review into the election outcome—quite an astonishing level of failure. But, of course, he's been promoted up, and it goes to show just how incompetent the Liberal and National parties are.

In closing, I want to thank the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance, the Assistant Treasurer and the whole government economic team for the work they've done on these appropriations bills and for their ongoing work through the budget process. The appropriations bills back in my electorate of Blair and support many of my local election commitments and our record of delivery in our region, including my own personally. I'm going to continue to deliver vital cost-of-living relief in my electorate, and these budgets go a long way towards that.

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