Matt Gregg (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2025-2026 and related bills. Like every appropriation bill, it is about priorities—the choices we're making as a government to tackle the big challenges and seize the opportunities before us as a country. But it also means changes and opportunities at a local level, so I'll begin by talking about things happening locally in my electorate of Deakin, and then I'll go to some of the broader economic initiatives seen in these documents.

Locally in Deakin, I'm proud to say we've now got the Croydon Primary School gym, which I discussed here only a couple of weeks ago. That's now open. We're working on the Croydon Main Street Revitalisation, which is now underway. That's supported by a $7.5 million investment from the Albanese Labor government. To give you a bit of a picture, picture an outer suburban area, very mid-century infrastructure and design, and pavements that aren't exactly what you'd call even when you're trying to use wheels on them. This project is updating and revitalising facilities that a fantastic community deserves so that people who are using walkers and things like that don't need to trip over. They're very practical but also great visual changes for a growing part of our electorate, with that beautiful revitalisation.

That's also complementing the Croydon Community Wellbeing Precinct, which is just a short walk from there as part of a very open, walkable experience, where we'll have new performance and event spaces, meeting spaces, a new library and fantastic facilities for local community groups. That is also backed by a separate $5 million investment by the Albanese Labor government. That's part of a new multipurpose hub, which is space for sports clubs and community groups and is backed by a $7.5 million grant from the Albanese government. So there's been really heavy investment by the Albanese Labor government in the fantastic community out there in Croydon, who are getting the updated facilities they very much deserve and have needed for a long while. No longer will we be taking a journey into the time tunnel and seeing what facilities looked like 50 years ago. We will finally have the facilities our community groups very much need as they continue to grow and thrive.

Another fantastic project now open is Forest Hill Reserve's redevelopment project. This was advocated for in 2022, when I was the candidate for Deakin. I was very, very happy to see this opened up after being elected as a member of parliament. Finally, in the 21st century, we have female-friendly change rooms. That's something we might take for granted in a lot of parts of the world, but certainly in my electorate, for a long while, if you had gone to many sports facilities and looked for the female bathroom, you would have realised there isn't one. We've been working on that for a little while now, and, finally, this great facility will have a brand-new female-friendly change room with unisex amenities as well, plenty of room for everyone, a refurbished social room, an upgraded kitchen, referee facilities and improved public toilets as well. I really want to thank the Forest Hill Football Netball Club and the Forest Hill Cricket Club, who have both worked together really well in advocating for those projects.

Another bit of work we're doing is the North Ringwood Reserve Pavilion redevelopment. That has been announced. That's a $2 million investment, and we'll be building a two-storey, very accessible pavilion with female change rooms, an elevated multipurpose space and a new viewing area for spectators as well. We're bringing these things into the 21st century so we can actually have inclusive clubs and as many people as possible playing sport without feeling like they need to get changed in their car in the car park, which has sadly been the reality for many individuals, particularly women, for far too long.

Another exciting development is the Nunawading Basketball centre, which serves our area as well. It's close to the member for Menzies seat, as well as the member for Chisholm's. That is a $45 million investment and a fantastic new facility. Young people are playing basketball at levels that certainly are unfamiliar to me as someone from the many generations of just football and cricket, but that has received huge take-up and is engaging a lot of communities. We're expanding that to really just reflect demand that's been there, pent up for years, to make sure it's serving as many people as possible. That will be something we'll hopefully get a little bit more support from the Victorian state government on, if possible, as soon as possible. The centre, like many things in our part of the world in our outer suburbs, is ageing. The funding will deliver more courts, better and more accessible facilities and more space for people of all ages to play basketball, as well as netball and other sports.

If I go onto the broader picture for what this means for Australia, in health care the maximum co-payment for medications on the PBS has now gone down to the lowest level it's been since 2004, 22 years ago. That is, of course, in addition to the freeze of the price for those on healthcare cards, which has been frozen by this government so people aren't, as has sadly become too common, getting prescribed something by their doctor and not feeling like they can afford to pay for it, missing out on the benefits of those medications. This makes things a little bit easier for those people, particularly those who have to go on multiple medications simultaneously, because that can be very expensive.

We've also seen the single largest investment in Medicare in over 40 years, $8.5 billion, delivering more bulk-billing around Australia. That is 12 fully bulk-billed clinics available to the people of Deakin. That's 12 of 3,400 around Australia, so, finally, that Medicare card is doing what we all expect it to do, and people can go to the doctor when they need health care and ensure that they're not going to lose a heap of money, adding to their concerns at this time. A lot of people were missing out on essential health care because they simply could not afford it, and this important work around Medicare means that we're finally able to return Medicare back to its original promise. It's something I—and, I think, everyone in the government—is incredibly proud of. Despite the naysayers, this has been successful. Doctors have realised that this makes economic sense. They have started offering these services, and it continues to expand over time as the economics really stacks up on this.

As was noted by the member for Menzies, investing in primary health is essential. We see hospital waiting lists. We see full emergency rooms and things like that. Investing in primary health is a fantastic investment. If we can deal with things early, before they get out of hand and before hospitals are required, it's the best bang for buck you can get in the healthcare system, so it's incredibly important work. I know that the mission of strengthening Medicare continues. We've got a minister for health and ageing who is absolutely dedicated to making sure that Medicare continues to fulfil its promise and benefit Australians around the country. That record funding is in addition to record funding in hospitals. We've got a new hospitals deal, providing an additional $25 billion in Commonwealth funds to support hospitals in Australia, which is going to make a huge difference. That deal with the states has been a long time coming, but it's something we can all be incredibly proud of—to make sure that the hospitals continue to serve patients with the quality of care that they deserve.

Another exciting aspect of the agenda, reflected in these appropriation bills, is housing, after years of neglect from governments, federal and state. Traditionally, housing was not part of the federal government's role, but we've now got a problem 40 years in the making that has reached such a scale that it can only be dealt with by a Commonwealth government, and this Commonwealth government has stepped into the game. We are seeing investments from a $45 billion plan focused on three things—building more homes, making it easier to buy a home and making it better for renters. More than 570,000 homes have been built since Labor was elected.

There is more to do. There's an ambitious target of 1.2 million—a fantastic aspiration—and we continue to work for it. Even as challenges around Iran and supply chain issues come up, the focus on making sure supply is there is really addressing the root cause of the problem: demand versus supply. We need more and more supply. We need to continue on that relentless mission to ensure that we actually have enough houses for the people in Australia and that we can also deal with the very significant issue of price. This has been a supply-and-demand imbalance decades in the making. It's finally something that is being dealt with at a Commonwealth level. It really is going to be something that addresses one of the great intergenerational inequities that we're seeing. The ability to get your own home and have that sense of security is something that is invaluable to people and something that young people—people of my generation—felt was elusive. So these investments are incredibly significant and actually make that dream possible.

That's not to mention the work around the five per cent deposit scheme. Again, five per cent is still a significant bit of savings. You cannot be financially undisciplined and save five per cent of the current price of a house. Five per cent of $800,000, five per cent of $1 million, is still a lot of money to save. It is highlighting the financial prudence—the very reason we have deposits—as well as giving people a shot and actually making that dream possible. If you're saving for years and years for a deposit, that's time where you're going to struggle to rent or it's extra time you're going to have to stay at home. Saving that huge deposit has proven impossible for so many people—and not just people on the lower income scale. People who are on a pretty good wicket will, understandably, struggle to save a 20 per cent deposit for a home with contemporary prices, which have continued to, really, in my part of the world, double every decade. It's something that has been an important initiative, and it's been taken up by many people in my community. About 907 people in my electorate of Deakin have taken advantage of the five per cent deposit scheme. That is life-changing stuff and something they're incredibly grateful for. It's also a really important piece of reform to make sure that we're addressing that intergenerational issue of housing.

After a decade, we saw—I think the Commonwealth government built about 373 houses, something that does not reflect the scale of the problem at all. I hear debates in some state parliaments—'Do we build here or there?' Really, the answer is both. We need to build a lot of homes. The scale of the problem is huge, so we need to be considering all ideas of how we go about it. Rezoning, building in activity centres in the suburbs and building in the cities are not mutually exclusive. We have to have a solution that reflects the scale of the problem. 'Build, baby, build' would be my approach to this!

Finally, governments are seeing the light on this. They realise that this is going to be key to fairness. It is going to be key for social mobility. It's going to be key for health. The roof over your head is one of the most foundational needs of human beings. Finally, we are addressing these priority issues, and it's fantastic to see the work being done by the Australian government in making a real difference to people's lives not only in my community of Deakin but around Australia.

Jobs and wages is another area. Again, this all connects with the cost of living. Since the election of the Albanese Labor government, 1.2 million jobs have been created. That is an incredible record. Our reforms have got the enterprise bargaining system working again. Now, about 2.65 million Australians are covered by an enterprise agreement. That's an arrangement negotiated between workers and their employers, terms and conditions that suit the parties involved, rather than a generic award. This is something that is suitable not only for the industry but for the individual employer. We know that, when we can get rid of disputation and actually come to agreement and an accord between workers and those who employ them, that gets better outcomes for both. It is the best model to ensure fairness for workers at the same time as addressing opportunities for productivity, because we know that, really, the workforce and the economy don't work well when industrial policy is defined by a race to the bottom on wages. No-one wins from that. It's actually anti the productivity we very much need. If it's all too easy to get a competitive advantage just by short-changing your employees, you're not innovating; you're not coming up with new ideas; you're not changing what you're doing to do things better. You're simply saying, 'Well, I can make more profit if I spend less on this input'—that input being a human being who's doing the work. So it's really important to see the enterprise agreement system working as intended, and I'm pleased to see that the changes made continue to support that model.

We're also seeing a government that is actually dedicated to increasing the wages of those on the lowest amounts, a government that is willing to support increases to those on the minimum wage—people who we know are doing it tough, people who are really facing the brunt of this cost-of-living challenge that so many of us are facing—a government that actually wants to see workers doing better. It's not a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture to see wages go down. We want workers to share in the prosperity that we are going to be building together. We also want to support business in increasing productivity. That doesn't mean lowballing wages. It means doing things better. It means innovating. It means investing in research and development. We are focusing on what will build productivity—not the shortcut, not the short-changing. We need to be focused on what is going to make our economy work and tick for the decades to come.

That's also connected with the initiatives we're doing around superannuation boosting the low-income superannuation offset—or LISTO, as almost no-one knows it as—from $310 to $810 and raising the eligibility threshold from $37,000 to $45,000 from 1 January 2027. In layman's terms, it simply means that the taxation of superannuation isn't antiquated. Paying more for having money in super than not would make no sense. It's keeping up with the reality of our tax system and also ensuring that the benefit of tax cuts for, particularly, low- and middle-income people are being fully enjoyed. This is going to benefit about around 1.3 million people, and it could mean a benefit of around $15,000 to a lot of individuals. Of course, that depends on their income over their career.

The payday super reforms as well are going to make a huge difference. For an average 25-year-old worker, in their retirement balance on the compound interest alone—that compound interest being the magic underwriting superannuation—they're going to see an extra $6,000, or equivalent to that, in their accounts by the time they go to retire. It also clamps down on unpaid superannuation, which the ATO estimated to be around $6.25 billion in the most recent financial year data. So it's addressing a very real problem. Earned wages—money that has been earned by workers not being paid to them. This is recovering money that's really been taken from workers through no fault of their own—sometimes not deliberately but certainly in a way that is incredibly significant and needed to be addressed. So those are incredibly important reforms.

In education, the Albanese Labor government has wiped 20 per cent off the HECS debts of thousands of Australians, including 24,000 in Deakin, and over 3.2 million around the country are now better off under those reforms. We've also got a new schools agreement which is going to see the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement increasing money to public schools by a huge amount. That's worth about $16.5 billion over the next 10 years.

So, in all areas of public policy, the Albanese Labor government is focused on the cost of living, ensuring that we're increasing the social mobility of our community and making sure that tomorrow continues to be better than yesterday.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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