Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every budget, there are winners and losers. This year, gas companies are the big winners. Instead of ensuring Australians receive a fair return on our oil and gas, revenue from our oil and gas will actually fall.

Imagine the nice things we could have if our government had the courage to make oil and gas corporations pay their fair share of tax. We could expand the PBS to fund more life-saving medications. We could eliminate out-of-pocket costs for seeing GPs. We could make it easier to see medical specialists in public hospitals. And we could make dental more affordable. We could provide universal child care. We could improve aged-care services, without cutting private insurance rebates. We could fully fund foundational supports and Thriving Kids, so that the 160,000 Australians who are about to get kicked off the NDIS would have somewhere to go. We could dismantle Job-ready Graduates. We could expand paid prac placements. And we could support our universities better. We could fix HECS, so that Australians aren't paying more in HECS indexation than we are receiving from the PRRT.

The choices that governments make reflect their priorities. In this budget, the Albanese government has prioritised oil and gas multinationals over Australians. And they're not going to forget it.

Jo Briskey (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Tuesday night, the Treasurer handed down a budget aimed squarely at tackling intergenerational inequality. We have listened to the young people, and to people right across my electorate, and heard how they felt the system was rigged against them and the status quo was just not working.

Unlike those opposite, who'd rather punch down on migrant communities and lay the blame at their feet, this government is getting on with the job of getting people into their own home. Already, our Labor government has built more than a thousand homes in my electorate alone, which is three times the number that the coalition built across the entire country in the decade that they were in power. So I think it's a bit rich for those opposite to purposely mislead and play cheap politics around our ambitious housing agenda.

Not only are we changing the tax system to level the playing field, to get more people into their own home; we're investing in the infrastructure needed to help deliver more than 65,000 new homes. So I ask: how are Australians meant to take those opposite seriously on housing supply, when they couldn't even build more than 400 homes in a decade?

The message to my community is clear: this government is committed to tackling our housing crisis. We are following the path of reform, rather than the path of least resistance.

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight, the Leader of the Opposition will use his budget reply to lay out a plan to restore Australia's standard of living and protect our way of life. It'll be a direct contrast to Labor's budget of broken promises, higher taxes, more debt, lower living standards and fewer homes for Australians. A number of my constituents have raised concerns about Labor's budget, including Somya from Beecroft, who has concerns about the capital gains tax changes.

She wrote:

What troubles me most is the impact on my parents.

My parents are first-generation migrants who came to Australia with very little and built their lives entirely through hard work.

They raised two children while working full-time jobs, sacrificed continuously, and slowly built a modest investment portfolio over many years as a foundation for their retirement. They are not wealthy by any measure.

They're people who did exactly what this country asked them: work hard, save, invest, plan ahead.

Now, as they approach retirement and are putting my younger sibling through medical school, these reforms threaten to fundamentally disrupt their financial plans.

The reality of these reforms are that they penalise long-term investors, many of whom are ordinary families and working people.

Somya's parents have tried to do the right thing, and we should back them. But this story is a reminder that Labor stands for high tax, more debt and fewer houses. We want Australians to not just work hard for their money but make their money work hard for them. Tonight, you will hear that we stand for something different than Labor's class-war budget.