Matt Burnell
Spence · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“Christiana also said: We need Carnival to stop exploiting the workers. We work very long hours and get paid not even peanuts. Australia has built its reputation on fair wages, safe workplaces and respect for working people. Those values cannot stop at the water's edge.”
“Long shifts are routine, often stretching well beyond 12-hour days. Nobody should have to choose between protecting their health and keeping their job, and, after I heard this, nobody can convince me to go on a Carnival cruise in the future. The Maritime Union of Australia deserves enormous credit for exposing these practices.”
“This was about making sure those without a voice had someone prepared to stand up for them. That experience has stayed with me ever since. Perhaps that is why I reacted so strongly after meeting two former Carnival Cruise employees, Queen and Christiana, this week. What they described left me entirely appalled.”
“Queen and Christiana described having to purchase their own drinking water, Wi-Fi, toiletries and sanitary products while living on board. Basic necessities became another cost deducted from wages that were already impossible to live on. No employer should expect workers to pay simply to meet their most fundamental needs.”
“Thank you to the member for Mayo for that fine contribution to this House just now. Before I entered this place, I spent a decade working offshore in the Australian oil and gas industry.”
“I call on AMSA to ensure these rights are respected and enforced. I know the pride that comes from working in the maritime sector. I also know the sacrifices made by those who spend months away from their families to keep global trade and tourism moving. That commitment should never be rewarded with exploitation.”
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“The member for La Trobe and the member for Casey are aptly chiming in here. I think we all know that there are much better orators than I, but it starts in those early years. There's a great quote from the former premier of South Australia. He talks about one of the things that this bill removes—that is, the activity test. He says, 'It has always been punitive and unfair.' I think that's what makes Labor governments so distinctively different from other governments—that is, we take the 'un' out of 'unfair'. We make sure that it is about fair and is about equity for everyone in our community so that they aren't left to the side. I want to get into the actual content of this bill, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. I spoke about the activity test. That is part of the core function of this legislation.”
“She knows the level of disadvantage that exists in my electorate, the electorate of Spence—specifically, around places like Elizabeth Vale, a place I speak about on a regular basis, Davoren Park and Elizabeth Downs. There are numerous suburbs I can list off in my electorate. Deputy Speaker Georganas, you know this all too well; you reside in Adelaide and not too far from my electorate. We have significant challenges, and one of those is equitable access to early childhood education for our youngest people. This removes barriers and gives you, regardless of your socioeconomic background, an opportunity to provide your child with the early education they deserve, to give them the best start, so that they, one day, very well might be standing here in my place, giving a much better speech than I am right now. It wouldn't be hard.”
“I want to let the House know that, because of our measures, there are 1,083 new services, including—the member for Forrest should take note of this—325 in regional and remote Australia and more than 90,000 additional places in educational centres across Australia. It is an important point. Yes, we know there is an issue, but we are getting to work and we are getting it done and we are making sure that we fill those gaps. That's what good governments do. That's what this government is doing. The member for Moncrieff came in here earlier, and disappointingly—I say 'disappointingly' because I know the member for Moncrieff has a personal connection to my electorate. She knows my electorate probably better than most people in this chamber.”
“But I also want to be very clear on this front that, for the nine years before those in this government came to find ourselves on this side of the chamber, there was another government. It had an opportunity to change the course of history and the direction that our early learning centres took and the opportunities provided for our youngest citizens, and that was not taken. It is why this government has had to put so much emphasis into training early childhood educators. It's why we've had to fight to lift early childhood educators' wages by 15 per cent because we had a retention issue.”
“That's where the role of government comes in: to level the playing field and provide opportunities for everyone to have access to a fair education and a fair level of care. That's what this legislation goes to; it's at the very heart of this legislation. I want to address some comments made by previous members who have come into this place and have had their moment behind the microphone. I want to start with the member for Forrest and her conversation around the childcare deserts. It's important we do address that, and I don't for one second contend that there aren't concerns and issues with remote and regional areas where we're having difficulty with the provision of childcare and early learning centres.”
“Those years, from zero to five, are some of the most important years that a child can be exposed to the benefits of an education, to ensure that they have the basis for a successful learning pathway throughout primary school, secondary school and then VET or university. I'm the benefactor of a VET qualification. Many in this chamber have got one, but probably a much larger number have got a university degree. They were probably, for the most part, set up because of the learning that they were exposed to when they were between the ages of zero and five. We know that it has become harder for parents to be able to look after or raise their children, with the pressures of keeping a roof over their head, putting food on the table and paying for the cost of an education.”
“Every now and then in our lifetime there comes a moment when we have an opportunity to change the course of history. In the years leading up to my coming to this place, I never thought such a moment would happen for me, but today I am proven wrong. Today, the text of this legislation gives me, along with every other member in this place, the opportunity to change the course of history and the opportunity for every young person to have a better future as they continue to grow. The reason I say that is that the research is very clear around the positive impacts of early childhood learning.”
“From the town of Gawler, to Darren Dwyer, James Krieg, the First Steps Playgroup and Relay for Life: congratulations on your significant achievements and thank you for the work that you do. The City of Salisbury's Madeeha Usman, Dal Za Tuang Naulak, Dennis Greenhill, Mary Purbrick, the Northern Districts Athletics Club, the Salisbury Business Association and the Asbestos Victims Association: thank you for your service to our community and congratulations. Finally, the City of Playford. To John Eoncheff, Kaitlin Ownsworth, the Lions Club of Elizabeth Playford, the Salvation Army Playford Corps and the Playford Bowling Club: congratulations and thank you for your hard work— (Time expired)”
“Australia is a nation built on unity. Our story as a people is written by individuals from all walks of life, united by the special bond we know as the Australian way, coming together for the common good. I want to take my time in this place now to congratulate those everyday Aussies in my community who received Australia Day honours and whose efforts make our country the great nation it is. Mr John Hough is one of those everyday Aussies. He was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in the General Division for his service to veterans. Mr Hough, thank you for your service and for the work that you do in bringing together and supporting our veterans to make their lives better. There were also several local Australian of the Year award winners across the northern suburbs.”
“Julie Murphy and her team go out into the community of Elizabeth Vale, knocking on doors and getting young children dressed and brought to the school to make sure that they have the best education they possibly can. This sits outside of what the SRS is fundamentally there to do, but this is what great teachers do. This is what great leaders in our education system do. They 'give a Gonski'. They take the essence of education in its purest form and they know what that means for the young people that they're teaching. Without principals like Julie Murphy, and her team, we are worse off. This SRS funding is going to help with the retention of fantastic leaders and teachers at schools like the Elizabeth Vale Primary School, and I commend this motion.”
“That journey started in 2011 with the Gonski review, which made a recommendation that public schools receive 100 per cent funding and that that funding go towards things like phonics tests, numeracy and literacy tests, and having support staff in classrooms to help with unruly children. That takes me to one of the primary schools in my electorate—one that I'm very fond of. I recently had the great good fortune of taking the Minister for Education Jason Clare, there to meet the fantastic principal, Julie Murphy, her team and the wonderful students who go to learn at that primary school. Julie Murphy and her staff go above and beyond every single day to meet the learning needs of the young people who go to that school in my community. When I say 'go above and beyond', I don't just mean turning up and delivering classes.”
“Going back to the timing of this one, I reckon that if the member for Nicholls could, in the words of the great Cher, turn back time and find a way, he'd find a way to change this one up a bit, because I'm now going to chart what's caused the issues the member raises. Those issues are poor behaviour in classrooms, the negative impact on learning outcomes because of it, worsened morale in the workplace for teachers, and constant retention headaches for schools, which are especially prevalent in my community. Those opposite sat on our hands and watched these issues for nine long years, and Labor is getting things back on track.”
“This is a federal Labor government doing what it does best: meeting the needs of our communities, including my community, where help is needed most on this front. This is an investment of an estimated $1 billion in additional Commonwealth funding over the next 10 years, which represents the biggest investment into South Aussie public schools in the history of the Australian government. This is a federal Labor government that gives a Gonski—one that is committed to a genuine lift in the standard of education in this country, to tackle disadvantage head on and level the playing field.”
“I'll also give credit to the member for Nicholls for another reason, and that's going back to the timing of this motion, because just a couple of weeks ago my home state of South Australia—our home state, Deputy Speaker Sharkie—signed a historic agreement with the federal Labor government, to fully fund public schools to bring our classrooms to the level they need to be at, to address the core of the issue the honourable member raises in his motion and to finally correct the record after years of ignorance from those opposite. That agreement was for the federal government to come together with the Malinauskas state government in South Australia and cover 25 per cent of the schooling resource standard.”
“Beyond that, thriving countries like ours are built off the backs of teachers, who will often give the majority of their lifetime towards educating our children. The education system deserves national attention to continue this progress we make, both as a national collective and as individuals, and this motion helps to do so.”
“I have to be honest here. I feel for the member for Nicholls. I reckon he would have come up with this motion and deliberated on it with his colleagues towards the end of last year. I'll at least give him credit here: the subject matter is important. It's important that the classrooms our children develop in are brought to the attention of this House. The Albanese Labor government is committed to advancing our communities from the ground up through education. For communities like the northern suburbs of Adelaide—and I've said this a few times now—education is the key to opportunity. It is the circuit breaker for disadvantage. It serves to lift individuals and families out of intergenerational cycles of poverty.”
“That's why the obligations that will be applied to banks, telcos, digital platforms and other regulated entities to combat scams will be tailored to the sector they're in to both match the operations of a regulated entity and better suit the scams these obligations are trying to mitigate. I commend this bill to the House.”
“Again, our approach to fighting the scourge of scams is people-centric. It's to ensure people like the everyday Aussie I referred to earlier and the other thousands upon thousands of Australians who fall victim to these criminals each year are at the heart of the legislation before us today. That's not to say industry bodies are pushed aside either. I'll finish on that aspect of the bill. The Scams Prevention Framework has been forged in consultation with industry, with the regulated entities that I have referred to. It's not the intention of this bill to scapegoat or target regulated entities through obligations provided to them. This can't happen, because, as a government, we know that these entities are essential to winning the fight against scammers.”
“Through the bill, we are mandating that Australians have direct access to these regulated entities to report scams so that their efforts to minimise the impact of a scam are updated constantly through community feedback that must be taken on board and actioned in a transparent manner. That is a large part of the Scams Prevention Framework: to be able to scale to the threat of the scams present at a given time and stay one step ahead of the criminals looking to exploit Australians. Even then, should those measures I've mentioned fail and an Australian fall victim to a scam, that complaint mechanism also provides for free and open dispute resolution processes should Australians feel a regulated entity could have done more to protect them, which can potentially lead to compensation or other action.”
“This will mean that the moment a scam goes a different direction, the moment a new tactic is deployed that could potentially ruin the lives of thousands, those regulated entities will know about it and, bound by the steps they will have to take through this bill, be able to mitigate these threats more efficiently. Communities will also be better informed about new threats, not just by reporting them but also by the provision that regulated entities take action to inform their collective users about scams and warn the community of threats present around their respective services and platforms.”
“You only have to look at AI's current capabilities, whether in deepfake, in producing lifelike text to speech or in generating highly accurate imagery from next to nothing, to see how a criminal will deceive people into sharing sensitive information online or over the phone. Their efforts will become more and more dangerous as those technologies become more and more advanced. Relevant legislation needs to allow room for approaches to combat scams to advance at the same level of sophistication of scammers and to set in stone the right of Australians to report scams to regulated entities as part of the whole-of-economy approach this bill takes and have those reports taken seriously, underpinned by the obligations that those banks, telcos and digital platforms will have through this bill.”
“This public scrutiny will also work in tandem with the penalty of up to $50 million for egregious breaches of the Scams Prevention Framework, which is another significant strength of the bill. The second highly beneficial aspect of the complaints process implemented as part of this bill, which cannot be understated in its importance, is that it helps keep the legislation robust as it combats an ever-evolving and changing threat. As I pointed out earlier, scams change. As sophisticated as they are now, with phone calls that sound and act like your bank, from phone numbers that look like your bank, in reality, they are criminals who definitely aren't your bank. These elaborate scams will continue to evolve at a rapid pace as technology continues to progress at the same rapid speed.”
“It will also further ensure that these parties can be held accountable for the steps they're taking to make sure their customers and users are protected adequately. The accountability from the complaints process that the Scams Prevention Framework will enforce is beneficial in two particularly notable ways. The first is in its reinforcement of community expectations—that is, Australians can give feedback on the measures these regulated entities are taking, which will, in turn, better inform the government on whether that entity is meeting its obligation to protect Australians from scams and serve to enhance the enforcement of scam protection to a greater effect across the economy.”
“This needs to occur firstly to ensure scams are reported quickly to those private entities so they can work with individual cases more effectively and warn the wider community and, secondly, to ensure swift action can be taken to protect the user and their information or data that has been compromised should a scam succeed. This brings me to another facet of the people-centric approach in this bill, which is a requirement for regulated entities to have a dispute resolution process in place to deal with consumer complaints. This will address the present shortfall in ensuring that regulated entities communicate quickly and effectively with Australians who need help with a scam related issue.”
“At that point, when a scam came in, say, via email, we would deal with it using a spam folder or a delete button. While these mechanisms worked for that kind of thing then and continue to do so now, scams have progressed long beyond those emails. Criminals are deceiving people in a convincing matter that they are large organisations and government agencies and through technologies that are much more advanced than they were previously, in a heavily digitised and vulnerable world. As a result, these regulated entities, as the bill describes, need to directly engage with Aussies and work with them to mitigate the damage of a scam.”
“This is especially true on digital platforms, like social media and search engines, which are largely unregulated at this point. This has become more of an issue as scams have rapidly become more sophisticated and more dangerous. There was a pretty commonly held perception, which started over 20 years ago, that a scam online consisted of a person from a long-forgotten royal family, located halfway across the world, sending you an email to tell you he owes you millions of dollars and you should give him your bank card details because he really wants to give you that money. There were more sophisticated scams than that at the time, but this was widespread and became what people thought of in public discourse on the subject. It meant that scams online weren't taken as seriously then as they are now.”
“It enforces that protection by legislating that the regulated entities take responsible steps in all circumstances across the economy to develop and maintain ways of shielding Australians from scammers. While there have been voluntary efforts by private entities that have been implemented, such as two-factor authentication for logins, or systems to notify users when their information is at risk, more action is needed. The government's engagement with regulators, law enforcement and industry has shown that businesses aren't always prioritising scam prevention or systems to mitigate it, which leaves people at risk. That engagement also found that the mechanisms for reporting these scams and getting the urgent assistance needed if an Australian feels they are at risk are inadequate and often toothless.”
“The member for Mallee was quite right in her remarks on this bill that these scammers are the scum of the earth for committing acts like that. Worse still, they are widespread in our country. That's why government needs to take action, and I am proud to be part of a Labor government which is doing just that through the bill now before the House to establish the Scams Prevention Framework. One of the reasons I opened my contribution with an individual's story is that this legislation is people-centric. It protects Australians by making entities relevant to scam prevention, such as banks, telecommunications providers and digital platforms, accountable to customers. It does that because consumers are reliant on those parties to take the steps needed to protect Australians from scams.”
“That adds up to the human toll which the scams ecosystem has in this country. While the economic figure I began with is significant, the cost to the individual, psychologically, socially and, of course, physically is absolutely devastating. This constituent's experience is just one of the many that I have so far heard since beginning this term. I'm confident that every member in this place has had someone in their own community come to them for assistance to deal with a scam. In my role, I've seen websites trying to impersonate the federal government's GrantConnect, trying to make people pay hundreds for advice that is freely available. I've seen emails attempting to convince pensioners that they are from Centrelink or Australia Post—and these are pensioners who rely on information from these services to live.”
“There are scores of people around this country who haven't been so lucky, from whom billions have been collectively stolen and from whom livelihoods have been taken. It could have been worse for this constituent, but, even without that happening, this woman had an ordeal that profoundly affected her mental health as well as her self-esteem. She still calls herself stupid and gullible for falling for a scam in the first place. We in this place know through our engagement with our communities and our exposure to the severe impact of scams in this country that Australians should never feel that way in this situation. They are the victims of heinous crimes which were reported to Scamwatch nearly 250,000 times last year. There is no shame to be had. But Australians do feel this way. They do feel humiliated by what's occurred.”
“She was fortunate that a man in the community who was passing by pushed her car to a service station up the road and put $20 of fuel in her tank so she could do what was needed to protect herself. I don't know who this man is, but I cannot commend his gesture enough. This is a genuinely inspiring act. It's how we do things in the north, and it's the kind of thing that will always triumph over the scum that put this woman in the situation she was in. Regardless, this constituent found herself crying in the car, worried about her rent, her dinner that night and her very identity. She says the ordeal took such a toll on her that she lost kilos of weight under the trauma of it all. I'll remind everyone that this is a scenario that worked out in the end!”
“Fortunately, my staff gave this constituent advice to secure her information and protect herself. In the end, no financial or identity based harm came of this, but there was certainly an emotional toll, especially in the rush with which this 80-year-old woman had to protect her livelihood. She was forced to travel back and forth to her bank to lock her account, to Service SA at Elizabeth to change her driver's licence and to the police station to report the crime, as well as to sign statutory declarations to prove that it happened. While she was under all that stress, her car ran out of fuel and was stuck on the side of the road, and she couldn't access funds that had just been compromised to fill it up again.”
“The constituent who attended my office had provided her drivers licence number, her bank details, her myGov login and her tax file number to this entity pretending to be NRAS, and she did so because she trusted the NRAS name. She couldn't fathom that a criminal would abuse the trust that people have in it and rob vulnerable Australians looking for help. Upon relaying that to my staff, this constituent burst into tears. She had already known what had happened before she'd walked in; she just needed a way to get the words out. It hit this constituent that the income support that she, as a pensioner, relies on, her control over her finances and much of her livelihood had been compromised by a person or a group of people who wanted to take it away from her.”
“She wanted to know more about it, so she had this conversation and pointed out that she had found a representative of NRAS on Facebook via an advertisement hosted on the site and had had a chat with that representative over Messenger. My staff looked up this supposed NRAS Facebook page and found the one she had been speaking to, along with a series of others. In fact, you can look up the phrase 'national rent affordability scheme' on Facebook right now and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. There are about half a dozen pages, all claiming to be the NRAS, all with the same teal-coloured background and coat of arms on the profile picture, each as dodgy as the other.”
“Scams destroy lives. You hear the figure $2.7 billion, which is what Australians lost in 2023 due to scam activity. Despite that amount of money being nearly impossible to imagine on a table in front of you and despite the astronomical physical cost of scams, which merits attention in itself, that figure of $2.7 billion still doesn't do justice to the human cost of scams and the livelihoods that are affected as a result. I had a constituent from Elizabeth North come to my office about six months ago. She initially had a conversation with my staff about the government's National Rent Affordability Scheme, the NRAS.”
“Not only are Labor ensuring everyday Aussie communities like mine are meeting their growing population's needs; we are doing so in a way that will help transform the lives of those who reside in them.”
“That long distance is also a situation that puts off families from attending those services. These are families that can be increasingly isolated from parental and family support services already, especially in our community. It's a fact that one in three of SA's most developmentally vulnerable five-year-olds lives in the area this new hub will address. I've already noted on numerous occasions in this place just how entrenched lower socioeconomic outcomes can be for families in the north. Circuit breakers are needed, and this new health service is exactly that for our community. The new family and wellbeing hub in Elizabeth Vale will also serve to complement the new Medicare urgent care clinic, the Medicare mental health clinic and the soon to be opened headspace in Gawler, all established under this federal government.”
“Currently, to get the type of care offered by the new family and wellbeing hub, a family, who may be in challenging socioeconomic conditions, would have to get the 224 Adelaide Metro bus into the city or take an up to two-hour round trip along the Gawler line to reach the Women's and Children's Hospital in North Adelaide. Any parent can tell you how hard it is to get a pram on public transport and about the difficult preparation that's needed for what is a family day trip just to access essential care services. These families who have to travel these long distances, often multiple times a week, are coming from one of the fastest growing outer suburban areas in the country. These services should be closer to them, and they will be when this project is complete.”
“Those essential care services include assets provided by the Women's and Children's Hospital, which has partnered with the federal government and other bodies to deliver the project. They include an allied health clinic to provide affordable health care to families, community spaces to bring people together through collective support, sleep rooms to support new parents and their babies, and other care services to ensure young families can mitigate potential challenges and stresses in order to secure their wellbeing. Thanks to this investment by the federal government and the overall partnership with counterparts at the state and federal levels, as well as third parties, those invaluable services are now on the doorstep of residents in my community, as they should be.”
“One of the most important areas where this federal Labor government has stepped in to accommodate growth in my community is in the space of health and wellbeing. I was immensely proud to be alongside the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government in my electorate last week when she announced that the Albanese Labor government would be providing $26 million towards the construction of the brand-new family health and wellbeing hub in the Elizabeth Vale health precinct. In tandem with the Lyell McEwin Hospital and the existing local health network, this will provide invaluable support for families in need. The new hub comes as an extension of care services that are usually exclusive to the Adelaide CBD.”
“Although it is a local government road, we've seen Curtis Road, in particular, fail to meet the standard required to support the community that has gradually been built around it. As a result, it can be nigh on impossible to get on and off Curtis Road at peak times. To me, this stresses the importance of being ready for substantial population growth by ensuring that essential services and infrastructure are able to support our communities. This is an area that all governments must stay on top of, and it is an area that our Labor government is on top of. Through government programs like the urban Precincts and Partnerships Program, we're taking the steps needed to make sure local communities are not just ready to grow but to thrive when they do.”
“BURNELL () (): The northern suburbs of Adelaide are some of the fastest growing areas of the country. There are large-scale developments in the north coming to fruition now, like Riverlea, Eyre and new parts of Virginia. There are areas that are identified for substantial growth, like Concordia, and there are multiple areas earmarked for new housing to be built through the transport corridor in Elizabeth, Munno Para and Salisbury in particular. But with that growth there naturally comes demand from the increased population, and for this growth to be sustained appropriately that demand needs to be met adequately. Unfortunately, this has not always been the case in the north. One example of this, which I've already spoken about in this place, is in road infrastructure.”
“We backed our Public Service. We gave the department the staffing and resources it needed to get those claims done because our veterans need those entitlements. We did that because the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide made abundantly clear the results of a DVA that doesn't work. We know that; the opposition leader knows that, too. For him to threaten to bulldoze our Public Service just to put his image ahead of veterans and other everyday Aussies is absolutely disgraceful. It's a policy that only leads to cuts, job losses and long lunches for the bosses.”
“Last week we saw more reckless comments from this Leader of the Opposition. This time around, as part of another shameless attempt to put his values above everyone else's, he's targeted workers in the Public Service. He has deemed their efforts, as well as the livelihoods of the Australians who depend on them, wasteful. Again, this is an opposition leader that has no idea about communities like mine, where tens of thousands of households rely on federal government services like the NDIS and Centrelink, and I have serious concerns in particular about the effect his ideology will have on veterans. This government inherited a backlog of nearly 42,000 DVA claims left sitting there by the Liberals. As of the end of last year, the DVA estimates that 97.7 per cent of those claims have been cleared under Labor's watch. How did we do that?”
“We're seeing that now under this opposition leader in the present as he blocks every effort made to help Australian households. I'm afraid we're going to see this destructive behaviour going forward. You only have to look at the Liberals' $1.6-billion-a-year scheme to make everyday Aussies pay for the lunches of the Leader of the Opposition and his mates. While some families in my community will have spaghetti on toast for tea tonight, the opposition leader wants that same family to pay for a boardroom banquet tomorrow. It's embarrassing that, on the rare occasion the alternative Prime Minister of this country comes out with policy involving food on the table, it's only to put food on the table next to him. It's only to raise his standard of living. I'm going to fight him because I want to raise your standard of living.”
“In fact, every time this Labor government has introduced relief to the household budget, every time members on this side of the House have fought for a better deal for everyday Aussies, whether that's making health care and medicines cheaper, making education and training more affordable or boosting wages, giving a fair day's pay for a fair day's work for Aussies, the Liberals have voted against it because they want to work against the living standards of everyone in this country. They want to continue the legacy of the previous Liberal government by getting our country going backwards again. Really? They are willing to deny Aussies cost-of-living relief to raise their living standards because it benefits the Liberal Party. We saw that in the past when the Liberals were in government.”
“Something else that raises living standards are boosts to housing supply in this country. Labor is doing just that, passing Help to Buy and build-to-rent legislation and embarking on the most ambitious housing program in Australia ever. Guess what the Liberals did? They fought tooth and nail to try and shoot this down. They would rather see fewer houses, fewer chances for Australians to find homes, higher rents and higher mortgages because they don't care about living standards in this country.”
“There is plenty more to do on this front, though, and this Labor government has never, and will never, shy away from this. Despite the substantial progress I've mentioned, costs are still high, and that is taking a toll on living standards in this country. Again, Labor continues to take action to make lives easier for everyday Aussies through direct, meaningful policy. That includes a bigger, better and fairer tax cut for every Australian, delivered in July last year, putting an average of $1,217 extra into the pockets of 67,000 taxpayers in my community, where that need for relief is extremely high. That is what raises living standards. What did the Liberals do? They were so appalled at policy that helps families in communities like mine that they wanted an election to take that money from Australian households.”
“We've lowered the Liberals' debt by $177 billion, and we have delivered back-to-back surpluses for the first time in nearly two decades. Let's contrast that to where we were before, under the Liberals. Despite what the member for Hume may tell you, under the Liberals, living standards fell by 3.7 per cent during the nine months leading up to the last election. Under the Liberals, real wages went backwards by 3.4 per cent under their watch, which we now know was a deliberate policy to stagnate and suppress the incomes of everyday Aussies. Under the Liberals, inflation had a six in front of it, when they left office. It now has a two in front of it, under a Labor government. This is the reality, whether the Liberals want to admit it to Australians or not.”
“Once again, the member for Hume has buried his head in the sand, alongside the Leader of the Opposition and his Liberal colleagues, completely ignoring the world around them so they can spend valuable time in the House bathing in their own reality to make themselves feel good. Here's a reality check: Australians are doing it tough, and families need help to keep up with the current cost of living. There is not a single person on this side of the House or in the other place that would disagree with this notion. We are taking action to deliver that help, by easing the pressures families are under. Under Labor, inflation is now lower and continues to fall, compared to where it was when this government was elected. Under Labor, real wages are growing again, after going backwards under those opposite. Under Labor, we've had record jobs growth.”