Emma Comer (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been just four months since the Albanese government was elected for a second term, and we have hit the ground running in delivering for all Australians.

Labor is united and focused on a commitment to build Australia's future not just for the privileged few but for all. Australians were in the back seat for almost a decade while the coalition fought over the steering wheel. Now Labor's driving, seatbelt on, fuel tank full. Where are we headed? To a future built for all of us, where support reaches every Australian in every city, every suburb, every town and every region. We're easing cost-of-living pressures, strengthening Medicare, protecting jobs and investing in a stronger, fairer nation.

I want to highlight some of our recent achievements that are delivering for health care, workers and the economy. From 1 January all medicines on the PBS will be capped at $25. This will save millions of dollars for millions of Australians. For women, we are delivering more choice, lower costs and better access to health care. We're boosting the number of health practitioners qualified to provide birth-control implant services, particularly in regional, rural and remote locations, including Taree. For men, we're investing $32 million in initiatives that support men's mental health and wellbeing and break the stigma around seeking support.

We believe that all you should have to take with you to seek medical support is your Medicare card, and we are taking decisive steps to make this a reality. We're building a healthcare system that works for every Australian. I challenge anyone on the other side to prove it and show they don't have a Medicare card. Australians know only Labor will keep Medicare strong, and we are working hard to prove them right every single day.

We're also supporting Australian workers. As of 1 July, we delivered a 3.5 per cent pay rise for minimum and award-wage workers. We are finally seeing pay packets move in the right direction after almost a decade of wages falling behind under the coalition. From retail staff and hospitality workers to cleaners and carers—this boost means families can get ahead, pay bills and plan for the future. We're also strengthening penalty rates. Penalty rates are not a luxury; they are the difference between paying rent and falling behind. We legislated to protect penalty rates, supporting the retail and hospitality workers who keep our economy going.

Labor is also supporting young people. Young Australians deserve opportunity, not a lifetime of debt. That's why we're cutting student debts by 20 per cent. This will make a world of difference for students and graduates right across the country, from regional TAFEs to city universities. Less debt means more opportunity to get ahead in life, go after your dream career and buy a home.

Speaking of homeownership, every Australian deserves the security of owning a home. We're allowing first home buyers, especially young families and single parents, to enter the housing market with just a five per cent deposit, so they can pay off their own mortgage rather than continuing to pay off someone else's. Labor is also investing in multicultural communities, funding language services, supporting festivals and backing community centres that bring people together. We stand with every Australian who has built a life here and calls this country home.

While Labor proudly stands with all Australians under our national flag and the flags of our First Nations peoples, the former opposition leader couldn't even bring himself to stand in front of them. That is a failure of leadership. That is a rejection of the very values of unity and belonging that our nation was built on, and that is something Australia firmly rejected on 3 May. Labor will never walk away from our flags, from our democracy or from the communities who have built this country brick by brick and generation by generation.

I want to end on a lighter note and express my pride in how Labor is delivering for people like me—the beer drinkers of Australia. It may sound small, but for small pubs and breweries across the country, in cities and regional areas such as Taree, freezing beer tax has been a big win. It helps keep local businesses strong and keeps a cold beer at the end of the day—after a long day, actually—affordable.

In just four months, the Albanese Labor government has done more to ease the cost of living, strengthen Medicare and invest in our future than the coalition did in nearly a decade. This is what delivering for all Australians looks like, and this is only the beginning.

Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support today's matter of public importance moved by the member for Gippsland regarding the Labor government's failure to govern for all Australians. Regional communities in my electorate of Flynn feel completely abandoned by the current Labor government. Since their re-election, the Labor government have utilised almost every opportunity to treat rural and regional Australia as a cash cow and as nothing more than an obstacle in the way of their high-spend and high-tax agenda.

Let's first look at Labor's proposed new super tax. The Labor government is determined to push on and impose a 15 per cent tax increase on unrealised gains—paper profits—on superannuation balances worth more than $3 million. Under Labor's plan, earnings on self-funded superannuation balances above $3 million will be taxed at 30 per cent, up from the current 15 per cent, without indexation. This includes both realised and unrealised gains on small businesses, farms and shares held in self-managed retirement accounts.

This superannuation tax carries enormous risk for farmers and young people in particular. In relation to agriculture, the Labor government doesn't care that, in Australia, many farmers own their farms through a self-managed super fund—$3 million doesn't buy you a lot of farm. With land values increasing, how can they possibly pay the proposed tax on an unrealised gain on that asset? Farms are businesses that face a lot of uncertainty and volatility in terms of weather, natural disasters, and land and global commodity prices. To tax unrealised gains at 30 per cent, when a farmer never knows what's in store for them in the next season, is just bound to hurt farmers' ability to plan for the next season. Labor's tax on unrealised capital gains means that Australians will be hit with a 30 per cent tax on the increase in book value on that asset, such as property, that hasn't even been sold. How is that possibly fair? Shamefully, taxing farmers in this way is unprecedented in the Australian tax system.

For younger Australians, going forward, more and more young workers will ultimately be caught by the Labor tax grab. Critically, the proposed $3 million threshold isn't indexed to inflation, and who knows what inflation will be over the next 30 or 40 years?

Right now, the electorate of Flynn is feeling the wrath of Labor's renewables-only approach, with over 90 proposed projects in the Flynn region I represent. This is tearing rural communities apart. Weekly, if not daily, my office and I are contacted by mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters who are at their wit's end. The terrible burden of fighting these solar, wind and battery projects, as well as associated transmission lines, is emotionally and financially destroying families. What does the Labor government say about these people? Let's hear directly from the Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science, Mr Tim Ayres. Last week, he said this in the Senate:

We are building electricity generation hand over fist here, and the big obstacle to … transmission projects in the regions … is the silly billies wandering around, stoking fear, stoking resentment …

You couldn't be any more out of touch than that.

On 1 July, the Labor government's fuel efficiency standards commenced, and this new tax could add up to $17,000 to the cost of a new petrol or diesel fuelled car by 2029. Australian families and small businesses will now have to start paying Labor's tax every time they buy a new vehicle, and who is going to be worse off? It's rural and regional Australians. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, our nation does not need its own government penalising drivers of petrol and diesel or hybrid cars and utes with an additional tax. This will drive up the prices of new and second-hand cars and make life harder for families, again particularly in rural and regional Australia. Labor's tax is estimated to add up to $7,400 to the cost of a Ford Ranger in 2026 and up to $14,400 by 2029. A popular RAV4 hybrid family vehicle will incur almost $5,000 of additional cost by 2029.

Under this Labor government, many Australians in rural and regional Australia are doing it tough. They're grappling with the cost-of-living crisis and a growing shortage of housing and have been bulldozed by overseas renewable developers that are profiting from Australian taxpayer dollars. To any ministers of the Labor government: I invite you to the Flynn electorate, where I can introduce you to real people that the Labor government is affecting with their crazy policies.

Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I saw that I had an opportunity to address this MPI, I opened up the email and I couldn't believe my luck. I thought, 'You've got to be joking!' because, if the opposition reckoned that we're the ones not governing for all Australians, then they either haven't been watching what's going or have been watching their favourite television programs a bit too much again. But they certainly haven't been listening to people out in the regions, where I come from, and in the outer suburbs and suburbs, so maybe I could tell them what is going on.

We've just opened our 90th Medicare urgent care clinic. That's 90 places where mums and dads and pensioners and battlers and everyone in between can walk in and see a doctor and walk out without paying a cent—bulk-billing, no drama. There's one in the northern Gold Coast in the suburb of Oxenford, and there's one in Logan at Browns Plains, which I hear is one of the busiest in the country, because it's our people that really need this sort of help the most. And there are more urgent care clinics on the way.

Compare that to when the opposition were in government. They watched bulk-billing collapse. They starved Medicare. They abandoned Australians who were at most vulnerable. This government, though, stepped in. We tripled the bulk-billing rate for pensioners and for kids, and now we're extending it right across the board. That's governing for everyone.

Health care is just one part of it. Let's talk about housing. I spoke about housing the other night in here, about how, back in postwar Australia—really, the foundation of the economic miracle that was postwar Australia was Labor and Liberal state and federal governments working together to build housing, create jobs and lay the foundation for this country's postwar miracle. They weren't mucking about with culture wars and cheap shots; they were rolling up their sleeves. In fact, I like to surprise people a bit when I say that one of my economic role models is actually Thomas Playford, the longest-serving premier in Australia and a Liberal. It's a bit of a surprise to some people I know. Playford understood something that the current opposition don't understand, which is that you build public housing not out of the goodness of your heart but to keep the cost of living down, to give workers a roof over their heads and to help business by keeping wages manageable. Housing is the backbone of productivity.

It was inspiring to hear the housing minister, this week, talk about housing being the Labor project of our generation—from five per cent deposits to Help to Buy, where the government is going to share the equity to dramatically slash the cost of entry into the market; to supporting National Cabinet's ambitious but necessary plan to build 1.2 million homes, 100,000 of which will be earmarked for first home buyers; and to undertaking the biggest public housing program in a generation to build more homes, making it easy to buy a home and making it better for renters.

It's the same story with energy. Back then, post war, governments built the energy networks. They made sure that power was cheap and reliable not just for households but for businesses as well, to help manufacturing and local industries. That's how manufacturing was built in Australia. Now we're investing in renewables, backing cheaper and cleaner power because it's good for the environment and it's good for business. Australians don't want yelling or finger pointing. They just want progress. They want a government that puts people first, and that's what we're doing. Whether it's free TAFE, the 20 per cent cut to HECS debts, cheaper child care, cheaper energy or backing in local manufacturing, we're not just governing for some; we are governing for all.

Here's the bit that gets up the nose of Australians the most; it's the sheer negativity and the divisiveness. Every time we bring forward a policy, whether it's on health or whatever, those opposite just say no—no alternatives, no vision, just no. Well, guess what? You can't build a nation on no. I say this to the opposition: genuinely get involved, change tack, back in these policies and take a hint from the last election. The invitation is there. Let's work together, like we did in postwar Australia. If you're actually interested in governing and not just grandstanding, let's put Australians first, because all Australians want is results, and that's exactly what we're delivering—for pensioners; for parents; for apprentices; for the outback, where I come from originally; for the outer suburbs, where I'm privileged to live now; for the inner city; and for everywhere in between. Spare us the lectures. Take a good hard look in your rearview mirror at your own record.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for this discussion has now concluded.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's a relief!

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Wannon, it's getting late in the afternoon, but let's be nice.