Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Rice for the question. It's on an important topic and one the government has been looking at closely when we've been working through our line-by-line audit of the budget of those opposite—how they used to allocate money—to see how we can make sure every dollar that is being spent is actually quality spending and is going towards supporting Australia and the Australian people. We've been clear, though, about the rate of JobSeeker. This did come up quite a number of times during the election campaign. Our commitment was to look at payments through the budget process and to look at, basically, how much money is available and ease cost of living where we can.

But we didn't make a commitment to increase JobSeeker over and above the indexation arrangements, which, because of the high inflation, will require a very significant adjustment to the parameters in the October budget, which the budget will have to accommodate as well. Part of the issue we're dealing with here is a trillion dollars of Liberal debt—deficits for as far as the eye can see. We do need to be fiscally responsible as well. They are the challenges facing us as we put together our first budget. We cannot just go and fund all the good ideas we would like to fund, because we've inherited an absolute mess from those opposite—a trillion dollars in debt, programs growing, terminating measures that have no funding beyond the next two years. These are the challenges we're trying to grapple with. But, rest assured, we will do a better job and we will care about people much more than those opposite did. (Time expired)