Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia faces a productivity challenge that has been decades in the making. This obviously has implications. It has implications on our standards of living, on our wages and on our long-term prosperity. This productivity challenge has a direct impact on the inflationary problem that we're currently facing. We do have a stubborn inflationary problem, and it obviously impacts the cost of living, which has a direct effect on Australian households and small businesses, as well as large businesses—in fact, right across our economy.

But those opposite would have us believe that government spending is fuelling inflation. In fact, at the heart of this inflationary problem is a productivity challenge, and they know it. They know it, but they did nothing about it when they were in government. In fact, the decade of government under the Liberals and the Nationals was the lowest period of productivity growth in 60 years. That's on them. Then they stand here and have the temerity to lecture the rest of us as if we've somehow had a lobotomy and forgotten about history. Well, that is economic history.

In addition, in the first term of the Albanese Labor government, they had every opportunity to support a huge suite of cost-of-living measures that we introduced. We were supporting this economy that we'd inherited and that was on its knees after a decade of Liberal dysfunction and delay on a number of fronts. We were supporting this country as inflation hit six per cent within months of us taking government. Has everyone forgotten that? It almost hit eight per cent at the end of that year. We brought in a range of measures, and we delivered, thanks to the enormous work of our Treasurer and Prime Minister, a soft landing. But, in this second term, we have seen what the neglect of productivity has done over many decades. That is why it is at the heart of our economic agenda. Our May budget will be focused on productivity. The Treasurer and the Prime Minister have said so.

While those opposite believe that productivity means working longer hours for less, we take a completely opposite view. We see this productivity challenge as an opportunity to invest in our people and their skills—like through free TAFE, which has seen over 725,000 enrolments Thirty per cent of those enrolments are actually in regional Australia. This is a story of regional Australia. Our young people, and older people, are deciding to reskill, for jobs that will deliver security, will be well paid and are going to be immune to the disruption caused by the AI wave that we know is coming.

In addition, we have supported Australians by strengthening Medicare. We saw a historic injection of $8½ billion into Medicare in November last year. We have seen a huge uptick in the number of practices that are now bulk-billing. Before this investment, there were about 1,600 practices that were bulk-billing. There are now 3,400. You will find one in your community. Go to healthdirect.com and have a look. You will almost certainly find a bulk-billing clinic in your community. And that's not all. There have been 130 urgent care clinics, now visited by 2.6 million Australians.

Affordable housing is also at the heart of our productivity agenda. There's no getting around this. We have to deliver housing. Businesses cannot function without workers living near their place of work. It has a huge cost-of-living impact on Australians if they are having to commute long distances, paying tolls and paying for fuel et cetera. That is why we have invested heavily in a housing agenda which is $43 billion. It's a sprawling agenda. And one of the golden, bright points of light in that agenda has been the five per cent home deposit scheme. Two hundred and twenty thousand Australians have taken up that scheme. Two-thirds of those buyers are under the age of 35, and over half of them are singles. This scheme is delivering the great Australian dream, which has been out of range for so many Australians for too long. This is at the heart of our productivity agenda and feeds directly into cost-of-living relief. (Time expired)