Ali France (Dickson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How is the Albanese Labor government delivering real and lasting cost-of-living relief, particularly for young Australians, students and apprentices?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dickson for her question. I congratulate her on what was an extraordinary first speech in this chamber last night. It was a privilege to be here, and I think that it will go down as one of the great speeches—a great beginning to what I'm sure will be a long career as the member for Dickson.

Today we are cutting student debt by 20 per cent through the legislation that we've introduced. We announced it last December. We said it would be the first piece of legislation that we would introduce, were we to be re-elected, and one of the reasons why we sit on this side of the chamber is this policy, because it resonated with those young Australians in particular who are looking for intergenerational equity measures, which is what this is, saving some three million Australians an average of $5½ thousand each. But, of course, those opposite said they would oppose this, and we went through the election campaign with one of the big distinctions between the Labor government and the opposition being that we wanted to provide that cost-of-living help, like we did throughout the last term, and—consistent with what they did in the last term—they opposed every single measure. This helps not just people who are university graduates but also about 280,000 apprentices who got vocational education.

And it's just one of the measures. We didn't wait for parliament to come back before we started delivering on our cost-of-living agenda. On 1 July, paid pracs for student nurses, social workers and midwives began. Now, I think that most people would have thought, if you're studying to be a nurse or you're studying to be a teacher—and these are professions that are in short supply; we want to encourage people to go down those career paths. When they took time out to do prac in a hospital or an aged-care facility or in a school, they would actually have to leave their part-time jobs. It would actually cost them money to do a prac. Well, under this government, that was fixed, from 1 July, just like the $10,000 bonuses for construction workers; just like free TAFE; and just like paid parental leave with super paid on it for the first time and an additional two weeks taking it up to 24 weeks, which will go up to 26 next year. The superannuation guarantee went up to 12 per cent. The $150 energy bill relief began. A 3.5 per cent wage increase for minimum age workers, and the subsidy for batteries, began as well— (Time expired)