Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A national budget is more than a large and complex accounting statement. It's more than a dry reckoning of what's coming in and going out of the national coffers. A budget is also a blueprint from which we seek to build a future, and in some ways, it's both a statement of intent and a statement of character. Today in his Press Club address, the Treasurer was spot on when he said that this budget was designed 'to serve our urgent priorities and our generational responsibilities at the same time and to make sure that the benefits and opportunities of this moment are shared across our continent and our communities'.

Our starting position was, unfortunately, the shambles we inherited, not just the waste and the structural potholes but also the ridiculous and cynical situation we discovered in which funding literally didn't exist beyond 30 June this year for fundamental ongoing things like MyGov, the eSafety Commissioner, various health programs and some of Australia's most important cultural institutions. We have had to fix things that, really, should never have been at risk and then begin the larger task of repair.

We came to government with a clear understanding of how working people and people on low and fixed incomes had been left to fall behind under the coalition, and we acted quickly to ensure there was a significant lift in the minimum wage. We also acted last year to address energy costs, and on 1 January we provided the largest decrease in the maximum price of medicines on the PBS in its history. This budget continues the work of reducing inflationary pressures and providing cost-of-living relief, especially for those who need it most. Families and households across the spectrum of life circumstances in Australia will benefit from our action to contain energy costs and inflation, to make medicines cheaper and to get wages moving again, noting that in this budget we are specifically delivering long overdue increase to wages for aged-care workers. Our reforms to aged care and early childhood education both proceed from a recognition that these are female dominated sectors, and it's absolutely welcome that in the first year of this Labor government we've made the largest investment in gender equality in the last 40 years.

For those on low and fixed incomes there is quite rightly a set of focused relief measures in the budget. I can't believe that anyone would argue against that manifestation of our values as Australians, and I particularly can't imagine that anyone from rural and regional Australia would make that argument, because that is where some of the most disadvantaged Australians are concentrated.

To that end, this budget delivers significant change to the support for single parents, expanding eligibility and making sure that people are covered until the youngest child is 14, rather than eight. It delivers support for renters, with the largest boost to Commonwealth rent assistance payments in 30 years. It provides a much-needed boost to JobSeeker, Austudy, youth allowance and other payments. It triples the GP bulk-billing incentive, providing the largest one-off increase in our history. And it supports targeted energy bill savings, which in Western Australia would be worth $350 for approximately 500,000 eligible households.

Each of these changes will make a difference, and in many cases there will be people and households that benefit from more than one of the changes. There will be Australians, for example, who are doing it very tough in reliance on JobKeeper support whose income will increase, but who will also have their economic and social circumstances improved by receiving more in rent assistance and through cost relief on energy, medicines and health care. I don't say to anyone who is living on the edge that their difficult circumstances are altogether alleviated by these measures. We know Australia's social safety net was pretty much run into the ground by those opposite over a decade. We've begun a concerted and upfront repair task while acknowledging that that work needs to continue.

In addition to fiscal and safety net repair and cost-of-living relief, the first full budget of the Albanese Labor government also looks to our future, a future that can and should be fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable. When it comes to environmental protection and restoration, there is $121 million to create an independent environmental protection agency that will make sure that decision-making is clear, timely and rigorous in turning around what has been a terrible trajectory of harm and loss. When it comes to renewable energy and energy efficiency, we have the $2 billion Hydrogen Headstart program and the $1.3 billion Household Energy Upgrades Fund to improve the uptake of storage and energy efficiency technology, with $300 million of that focused on energy upgrades for 60,000 social housing properties.

All these initiatives, all these decisions, are in keeping with the Prime Minister's commitment that this Labor government will take a responsible, hardworking, long-term approach to improving Australia's share of wellbeing.

House adjourned at 20:00