Matters of Urgency — Cost of Living

Slade Brockman

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.

James McGrath

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.

Varun Ghosh

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.

Nick McKim

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.

Long debate text truncated.