Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. What do today's inflation figures tell us about the cost-of-living pressures facing Australians? What action is the Albanese Labor government taking to help people get ahead, and what resistance has there been?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Chisholm is a wonderful representative of that proud multicultural community in Melbourne that she represents so well. New data, as I said before, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that headline inflation fell in both monthly and annual terms once again today. Inflation came off substantially in the month of May and it also moderated in annual terms. This is the second consecutive month that we have seen inflation fall in our economy. We welcome that development, but we're not complacent about that. Even though today's data was much better than the market expected, much better than forecast, we do recognise that people are still under pressure in our communities and in our economy. That's why helping with the cost of living and helping people get ahead are central priorities of this Albanese Labor government.

As the Prime Minister said a moment ago, if you just think about the real change that we are delivering next Wednesday—just the change that we are delivering from 1 July—more than 14 million Australians will get another tax cut from this Labor government, opposed by those opposite. The national minimum wage will increase by six per cent. Modern award wages will increase by 4¾ per cent following our submission to the Annual wage review. Parents will get 26 weeks of paid parental leave, up from 24 weeks. There'll be the regular indexation. There'll also be Australian workers benefiting, for the first time, from having their super paid at the same time as their salary and their wages. There'll be the new ban on excessive pricing of groceries. This is on top of the substantial tax reforms that we put in the budget before the parliament to give every working taxpayer two more tax cuts in the form of the working Australians tax offset and the standard deduction that those opposite voted against, and those on top of the extension to the fuel excise relief that the Prime Minister announced on the weekend.

This goes to a very important difference between this side of the House and that side of the House. This side of the House is delivering cost-of-living relief and delivering real change. The three right-wing parties over there are standing in the way of that cost-of-living help that we are delivering. They are all united by a divisive antiworker agenda, all three of them. But whether it's tax cuts for every taxpayer, higher wages for workers or help for first home buyers, we are on the side of workers and first home buyers on this side of the House, and those opposite are against them.