Senator McGrath has submitted a proposal under standing order 75, today, as shown at item 13 of today's Order of Business:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need to end the Albanese Government's assault on household budgets, with Australians paying more tax, more for their mortgage or rent and more for everyday essentials, while Labor pursues even more taxes that will make it harder to get ahead.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in accordance with informal arrangements made by the whips.

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need to end the Albanese Government's assault on household budgets, with Australians paying more tax, more for their mortgage or rent and more for everyday essentials, while Labor pursues even more taxes that will make it harder to get ahead.

There is a bubble in Canberra, and it seems to be a bit of a left-wing bubble where the Labor Party and their allies in the Greens seem to think that everything is tickety-boo out there in the real world, but it's not. Australians, regardless of the state or territory in which they live and regardless of their individual economic circumstances, are being assaulted daily by the decisions of this Labor government. It is an assault on their aspirations, on their lifestyle and on how Australians want to live from day to day.

Under the Labor Party, since they were elected in 2022, taxes have gone up, services have gone up, and yet Australians are doing it tougher because real wages have not increased. Under the Labor Party's economic policies, we're in this vicious cycle where more is being spent, which drives inflation, and then we've got the tax that hits the inflation, and then they spend even more. So the result is an economy where costs are rising, taxes are rising and productivity is falling, and there is no end in sight.

This isn't just about the weekly grocery bill. It is about whether Australians can afford to own a home, raise a family, start a business, save for the future and get ahead. It's actually about the Australian dream, which under the Labor Party has become the Australian nightmare. Since Labor have come to power, overall prices have gone up almost 17 per cent, rents have gone up 24 per cent, electricity has gone up 32 per cent, gas has gone up 36 per cent, food has gone up 18 per cent, insurance has gone up 43 per cent, health costs have gone up almost 20 per cent and education costs have gone up over 22 per cent. Everything costs more because of the policies of this Labor government.

The cost-of-living crisis has not happened in a vacuum. It's happened directly because of the economic policies that are being pursued by Mr Albanese and Mr Chalmers. But it's not just that the cost of everything has gone up. Taxes have also gone up more. The amount of income tax that is being paid by Australians has gone up 39 per cent since Labor came to power. Even after adjusting for inflation, income tax paid per person is up 7.3 per cent and Australians are being hit by bracket creep. As prices and wages rise, Australians are pushed into higher tax brackets even though their real purchasing power has not necessarily increased. So Labor are taxing Australians more on the inflation that has been caused by the Labor Party's own economic policies. Australians don't need more tax; they need to keep more of what they earn.

So you can have more of the same from the Labor Party, or the alternative is that you can look at the plan that Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan have brought forward, a plan that's going to focus on lower taxes. We're going to stop Labor's war on aspiration because we're going to axe their toxic taxes and introducing the tax-back guarantee and back in small businesses. We're also going to have cheaper power. We're going to get rid of the fallacy of net zero. We're going to make Australia an energy superpower. We're going to deliver cheaper power and energy abundance. We're going to free up housing stock and begin to restore the dream of homeownership. We'll cap immigration numbers based on available housing, and we'll put Australians first.

Because of Australia's out-of-control spending, Australians are paying more because of the inflation rate and our debt is going to hit $1 trillion. In fact, it has hit $1 trillion. That's $1 trillion of debt, $1 trillion of Labor spending. We're going to pay it back because that's what responsible economic managers do.

The coalition have long since abandoned any financial coherence or commitment to financial discipline in this country. At the last election and the period leading up to it, they abandoned their commitment to lower taxes as part of their elements of political offering. This is another motion that reminds Australians that the coalition are not for working Australians and that they're not even for lower taxes anymore. The lack of coherence or ideological consistency on that side is befuddling.

Senator McGrath wants to talk about political bubbles and the Canberra bubble, and it's really easy to do that. But I can tell you that the biggest bubble in this country is the one enveloping the Liberal and National parties, and it's growing and growing. It's a bubble between them and reality. It's a bubble between them and ordinary experiences in this country. When they come in here and talk about lower taxes and pressures on household budgets, let me tell you a few things about that. There are enormous pressures on household budgets in this country at the moment. People are doing it tough right around Australia. Every time the Albanese government has tried to relieve that pressure, those opposite have voted against it.

Let me remind you of a few of those bits and pieces. Whether it was energy bill relief, delivering tax cuts for working Australians, trying to build more housing supply or trying to give first home buyers and people trying to get into the housing market a fair go by changing the tax incentives to try and even up their chances against investors who could invest with deep pockets and a much longer time horizon in terms of their returns, this government has tried to take the pressure off and those opposite have voted against it every time.

But let's go to taxes, because it is Labor governments in this country that reduce taxes. Whether it's Hawke and Keating or whether it's Albanese and Chalmers, it is Labor governments that preside over big tax reductions and big tax recalibrations. The Albanese government has been at the forefront of these changes. Now, can I tell you what happened in 2022, when this government came into power. They were handed, by the Morrison government, what were called their stage 3 tax cuts. That was a decade-long commitment worth hundreds of billions of dollars that would have delivered its largest benefit to the highest income earners in this country—not working Australians doing it tough but the highest income earners. And that's a policy that the coalition designed. It's a policy that they legislated. So on days like today, when they come in and talk about pressures on household budgets and about working Australians doing it tough, you must look a little askance. I'm not sure I saw Senator McGrath blush, but he should have been. In January 2024, we recalibrated those tax cuts to help 11 million low- and middle-income taxpayers receive a bigger tax cut than they would have got. Those are the people under pressure, paying less tax—more money to spend on groceries, clothes and other essentials—and that's been part of a broader tax agenda.

The budget this time legislated another two rounds of tax relief designed to help lower income Australians. From 1 July 2026, the 16 per cent tax rate, applying to income earners between $18,000 and $45,000, dropped to 15 per cent, with a further reduction from 1 July 2027. That might not sound like much, but, when you accumulate what the government has done across the term in government, that's a big reduction. So it's a little bit disingenuous to come in here and talk about pressures on household budgets and about Labor's tax agenda when that tax agenda has been recalibrated to help people on the downside of advantage—people doing it a bit tough. By 2028, Australians will have received tax cuts worth around $3,000 a year. That's for someone on the average wage; it'll be slightly higher or lower depending on precisely where you fit on that spectrum. But that is $3,000 more a year in tax cuts for those under pressure.

The minimum wage is now at $1,000 a week. In fact, since we came to government, the national minimum wage has increased by more than $12,000 a year. That's not set by the government; that's set by the Fair Work Commission. But, every time in this government's tenure that that someone has gone to the Fair Work Commission to lift the rates, the government supported it in their submission. Low wages are not part of our architecture as they are of the coalition side's.

But what about all the other bits and pieces that fit into a household budget on the cost-of-living front? We have reduced the cost of medicines by lowering the price of prescriptions on the PBS to $25. Across Australia, that's around $200 million worth of savings for people when they get sick or need medicine. Our boost to the bulk-billing incentive has seen a significant increase to GPs treating patients free of charge. In WA, the number of practices billing all patients on a bulk-billing model was 111 in November 2025, and, as of June this year, it's 235. So, across the board, we are taking pressure off household budgets.

For 40 long, hard years, Labor and the coalition have been running the same neoliberal project in this country. Here is how it goes: they cut taxes for the very wealthy; they cut taxes for corporations; they privatise public assets; they outsource public services; and then they act completely surprised when hospitals are overcrowded, when public schools are underfunded, when housing is unaffordable and when essential services stop working. Every time government fails to look after people because politicians running a neoliberal agenda have deliberately weakened it, those very same politicians then point at the wreckage and say, 'See, government is the problem.' Then they turn around, double down and keep on selling more of the things that we the people used to own and more of the things that actually support people to lead dignified lives. What an absolute con this is!

The Labor and Liberal Parties have spent decades selling off and defunding the very parts of government that help people make their lives better, and then along comes this motion telling Australians that the great national objective is to get ahead. Well, get ahead of whom? Who are we supposed to be getting ahead of, and who gets left behind when other people are getting ahead? That is the society that the neoliberal agenda is trying to build, setting one person against another—a feral society where everything has a price and anyone who can't keep up gets left behind; a society based on competition, not kindness.

Government should exist to protect us from that. It should pool our collective resources and build things that none of us could build alone, and government should ensure that everyone is looked after and no-one gets left behind. That requires revenue, it requires public ownership, it requires taking back the things we used to own that the neoliberals have sold to the private sector for profit, and it requires leaders who actually want a government that is here to improve people's lives. The champions of the neoliberal project, Labor and the coalition, keep trying to prove government can't work by making sure that it doesn't.

In just the last four years, Australians have experienced a collapse in their living standards. Real wages have gone backwards, Australians are poorer today than they were four years ago, and productivity in our country has gone backwards for the first time in history. Australians no longer believe that tomorrow will be better than today, and that is an indictment on the performance of Labor in government.

Labor people are now criticising this Labor government. Not ordinary Labor people but luminaries in the Labor movement are now criticising this Labor government—none more important and influential than Mr Bill Kelty, who was the leader of the Australian Council of Trade Unions for 17 years. He has now found it necessary to come out and to criticise Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor treasurer Jim Chalmers. Don't believe me. Listen to what Bill Keelty has had to say himself—a former secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions for 17 years. Mr Bill Kelty has said:

Real wages are not improving in any significant way—they're falling.

Bill Kelty has said that Australians can't pay their bills and that housing affordability is worsening because interest rates are rising and real wages are falling. Unfortunately, that situation is only going to get worse for Australian families, as economists now predict there will be two future RBA rate rises in this year alone. Think about that: two more RBA rate rises in this year alone. The RBA's job is like that of a teacher: it marks the government's work—specifically in regard to how well the government is managing the economy. When interest rates go up, that is a sign that the RBA believes the government is not managing the economy well.

Bill Kelty had more to say about Jim Chalmers, the Labor treasurer. He said:

You had the treasurer say workers should be happy because their wage share is increasing, but their real wages are falling.

He went on to accuse Dr Chalmers, the Labor treasurer, of being 'ridiculous'. Bill Kelty said:

It's just ridiculous and people get offended by it. They can't pay the bills, and you—

the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers—

tell them your share of GDP is growing.

But there's more. Bill Kelty, the former ACTU leader, couldn't hold back. He went on to say:

The PM is telling the country with glee that the price of property is falling, yet the unaffordability rate is increasing.

Because interest rates are rising and real wages are falling.

So my challenge to Labor senators this afternoon is to stand up and tell this Senate chamber why Bill Kelty, ACTU leader for 17 years, is wrong. Why is Bill Kelty wrong? Why is he wrong to accuse the Treasurer of being ridiculous? Why is the Prime Minister wrong?

This is where things have landed. Australian families need to strap themselves in. They need to put their economic seatbelts on. They need to put their cost-of-living helmets on because things, unfortunately, are going to get significantly worse. And they get worse because the government has failed its primary task. The Labor government has failed its primary task, and that is to manage the economy in a way that benefits Australian families and that helps them to think better about tomorrow than they do about today.

Today, media outlets are reporting that Australian voters have woken up. They know that Labor has failed them on the economy. The next election will be fought on cost-of-living and economic issues, and people will mark Labor down. (Time expired)

I also welcome the opportunity to contribute to this motion. Although we disagree with it, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to it. I note that it's been brought to our chamber by the party that, to the last election, took policies of higher taxes and more debt. It's been brought to us today by the party that has been consistently opposed to higher wages. It's been brought to us by a party that has never met a cost-of-living measure in this chamber that they like.

We know Australians are doing it tough, and that's why our No. 1 priority, not just in this term but in the previous term, has been the cost of living. It's why we've been backing in higher wages. It's why we've supported a pay increase for some of our lowest-paid workers in highly feminised workforces like aged care and early childhood education. It's why we're investing in things like cheaper medicines, ensuring Australians now pay no more than $25 for their scripts, which is making a huge difference in my community, especially for people who have a recurring need to access such scripts. We're investing in making bulk-billed urgent care clinics a permanent part of Medicare. Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to need to use one of these services themselves, has had a child they've needed to take to one of these services or, like me, has had multiple children they've had to take multiple times, knows that these play an absolutely incredible and important role in our healthcare system. We're bedding them into the budget, to make sure that they can continue.

We're also investing in cheaper access to early learning, because we know that makes a big difference for families, as well as in six months of paid parental leave to ensure families have the choice to stay at home in those critical early months with their children. This is not only for an opportunity to take time off work for recovery but, of course, for when those critical bonds and connections are formed. We're investing in protecting penalty and overtime rates for workers and making it easier to buy your own home. These are all cost-of-living priorities, which have been our focus as a government.

When it comes to our tax reform agenda, it is focused on building a better, fairer, simpler tax system by reducing the tax burden for over 13 million Australian workers, by supporting 75,000 more Australians into the housing market, by delivering over $3.8 billion in new measures that lower taxes for businesses and startups and by reducing compliance costs by $540 million a year. On 1 July this year, over 14 million Australians received another tax cut—of up to $268. This was a tax cut that the coalition opposed and promised to repeal at the last election. Our combined tax cuts mean that workers on an average wage will pay around $2,800 less tax because of our reforms to the taxation system. While those opposite talk about the cost of doing business, we are the ones delivering new measures that lower taxes for businesses and start-ups and reduce compliance costs, real measures making a real difference.

Of course, tax relief for workers is only part of the story. Our reforms are also about helping first home buyers get their foot on the property ladder. This is an issue I hear time and time again in my community, particularly from younger people, who say they feel locked out and let down when it comes to the housing market and who tell me that they want to have the same opportunities that their parents and grandparents had. They want to be able to raise their children in the same neighbourhood that they grew up in. They want their child to have some grass in the backyard like they did or to have some amenity nearby to be able to go down to a park or visit their local GP who's been their GP for years. They want to live in that community. They want to be able to buy a home. Their parents were able to buy a home and were afforded that opportunity. Their grandparents were afforded that opportunity, and now it simply feels so unfair for the next generation that that opportunity isn't available to them. That's why we're trying to level the playing field here. That's why we're trying to make sure that those generations don't feel locked out of the housing market. It's not just being locked out of owning an asset; it's being locked out of everything that means—their connection to community, their connection to family and the schools their children can attend, whether they can attend the same local public school that they were able to attend.

These are big things which make a big difference to the fabric of our communities. It's not just about an asset. It's about where that asset might be located and therefore where your life is located, where your connection is located and what community means for you. That's why we're doing it. It's for those workers and those Australians. (Time expired)

Australians are living with the Albanese Labor government's cost-of-living crisis every day. They see it in their mortgage or rent, at the supermarket checkout and in their power bills, insurance and fuel costs every single day. Australians are working harder, paying more tax and watching more of their money disappear just to cover the basics. Labor and the coalition keep talking about these problems while pursuing policies that make them worse, frankly. One Nation has a plan to tackle the causes. Our super pay boost would give Australians paying rent or a mortgage the choice to receive 3 per cent of their future compulsory super contributions in their pocket for up to three years. It's their money. They should have that choice.

One Nation also has a plan to tackle the issue of mass migration, because you cannot keep bringing in more people than Australia can house and then wonder why rents rise, why Australians cannot buy a home and infrastructure cannot cope. That is why One Nation will substantially reduce Australia's temporary migrant population over three years, taking pressure off housing and essential services and restoring clear limits to the temporary migration system. This will restore Australians living standards, ease pressure on housing and essential services and bring population growth back to a sustainable rate. Sickly GDP growth driven by mass migration means nothing if Australians are poorer per person and cannot afford a home, find a hospital bed or get ahead.

Australians want action, not excuses. One Nation has the policies, the determination and the courage to deliver the change you can trust. I'll just say it again. Every day Australians are suffering through the Albanese Labor government's cost-of-living crisis, and the longer that this Labor government refuses to acknowledge it and refuses to accept that, the longer you will continue to suffer at home—the more your mortgages will go up, the more your rents will go up, the more your groceries will go up, the more your power bills will go up and the more your insurance and fuel costs will go up. One Nation has a plan to change things for the better. (Time expired)

After 4½ long years, the stats are in on this government when it comes to housing, and what we see is a collapse by 30,000 of the dwellings completed in Australia over these last 4½ years. We've gone from an average of 200,000 houses a year to 170,000 houses a year. Despite the government's brag that they are spending billions and billions of dollars on housing, we are getting 30,000 fewer houses a year. There are three tests for this budget. This budget was an audacious proposal to enforce a new tax code, where the government would collect $77 billion of new money. The three tests are: Does it ease rents? Does it boost supply? Does it give you more first home borrowers?

On the rents, the government said it would cost $2 more a week. They've covered up the modelling for reasons known only to them but for political purposes, but we know already that we see projections of rent increases of more than 200 bucks a week in some Australian cities, so it's a failure on rent. Then we go to supply. The tax measures themselves reduce supply by 35,000. The government say these are offset with infrastructure facilities, but why would the government want to reduce housing by one, let alone by 35,000? And then we have the other restraint on housing supply: abolishing the right of SMSFs to borrow to invest in new housing. By law, the owner of the fund can't live in it, so all that's doing is providing new housing for other Australians to live in. No wonder we have a supply crisis. The government, by those two measures, cut supply by 75,000 houses over 10 years, just because they don't like the investors.

We've never had a government that has hated investors so much that it would undermine the nation's housing supply in a housing crisis. It is incredible to me that you would cut housing supply because you hate investors. You hate investors negatively gearing, and you hate people investing in housing through their self-managed super fund more than you want to solve the housing crisis. It is incredible. It's a fail on supply. Then we have the mother of them all. How many loans are coming to owner-occupiers? National Australia Bank says it's down by 15 per cent since the budget down, so we have higher rents, fewer homes and fewer owner-occupiers, fewer first home buyers. That is a dividend from these new taxes.

The normal laws of economics were not suspended in May 2026 in Canberra. I know it's a weird and wacky place, but the normal laws were not suspended, and those laws are, if you want less of something, tax it, and that's what has happened in these three or four months since the budget. The taxes have gone up. The houses go down. It's a harder life for everyone, and we shouldn't be surprised. Why would we be surprised when we look at the government's record when it comes to housing supply? Every state and territory is failing to meet their housing target, and the government's flagship housing fund, the HAFF, with 10 billion bucks and almost three years—it's built 1,000 houses. The Auditor-General tells us that they bought half of those houses. This is a fund that has bought more houses than it's built. It's been beset with governance problems. I will now read into the record the Auditor-General. They said: '1,400 of the 40,000 houses have been built. Of these, 762 were new homes constructed, and 670 were purchased.' Minister Ayres is embarrassed by the record of his own government, which has been buying more houses than its built. Go and read the Auditor-General's report—

It was all nice and quiet until about 30 seconds ago, and I would just ask for senators to be heard in silence, and then anyone can make a contribution after that.

It's very telling that the government is so embarrassed by its own fund. The Auditor-General was very clear that half the houses were bought not built by the government, and the government, by interjecting in this debate, is showing how embarrassed it is about its own record of failure on housing—billions of dollars wasted on housing schemes that don't build. All they do is featherbed your own bureaucracy and all your mates down there at the unions. This fund has been more focused on subsidising the returns of super funds than it has been on building houses for people who really need the government to be successful.

There is a strong case for public housing and for social housing in this country, but there is not a strong case for subsidising the returns of vested interests, and this government has failed on housing. It's failed to build the houses. It's failed to help first home buyers. All it's done is help out its favourite friends.

The question is the urgency motion moved by Senator McGrath be agreed to.