Mrs PHILLIPS (Gilmore) I'm really excited to be here today to support the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024 and Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Medicare Levy) Bill 2024. Any change that is going to leave 87 per cent of people in my electorate of Gilmore better off is great news for local people, and I will celebrate that every way I can. This bill will deliver a tax cut to every Australian taxpayer from 1 July this year. That is 64,000 people in my electorate on the New South Wales South Coast. And I can tell you, local people need this extra support. They need a fairer tax system and they need real support to deal with the cost of living right now.

People are struggling with their rent and mortgages. They are struggling with their groceries, their petrol costs and their electricity bills. They need help and they need it now. More than that, they want to see a system that is fair, that puts the needs of those struggling the most first. The changes we are proposing here with this bill deliver that, and local people across the South Coast have been telling me how welcome that is for them. Tony from Malua Bay says, 'This is good policy and quite good politics.' Duncan from Callala Bay says, 'Cutting that tax handout is not a broken promise; it is a promise to review taxation equity properly.' He says, 'It is good economic sense because tax relief for poorer people will return to the daily economy. It will support and create employment rather than further imbalance wealth and power.' He says, 'Thank you for supporting this taxation recalibration.' You’re welcome, Duncan. Joan from Kiama called it 'a wise and necessary change that will benefit most workers'. I agree, Joan. Jean from Kings Point said, 'The original policy was designed to give crumbs to low-income families and generous tax cuts to high-income earners who do not need tax cuts. It would increase their earnings and investments and increase the gap between the haves and have-nots.' Well, Jean, that's exactly why we are making these changes, to make the system fairer, to help those who need it and to do so without increasing inflation. I could go on with the wealth of people across my electorate who have contacted me to praise the government's changes to these tax cuts, but I think we get the picture. As Tony from Malua Bay said, it is good policy. It is sensible policy. It is fair policy, good for local people and good for the economy.

Let's take a closer look at exactly what this bill is going to do. Under these changes, taxpayers earning less than $45,000 will now receive a tax cut—one they would not have gotten under the former Liberal government's plan. These are modest income earners, people working part time in my electorate, and we have a lot of them. Those earning average wages, around $73,000, will now get a tax cut of more than $1,500 a year, around $29 a week, and more than double what they would get under the Coalition's plan. Nurses, hospitality workers, teachers, aged-care workers, childcare workers and those transitioning into retirement are the people who are better off, and these are the workers keeping our economy on the South Coast going. For a family on an average household income of around $130,000, with one partner earning $80,000 and the other $50,000, their combined tax cut will now be over $2,600. That's about $50 a week extra in the family's budget and $1,600 more than they would have gotten under the old plan of the Liberal Party. That's why we are making these changes. It's to support families, women, those working in the care economy and in tourism, young people and those on award wages. These are the people that are struggling to get by. They are who we are helping.

By focusing on middle Australia and addressing bracket creep for middle Australia, we will improve participation of women with a taxable income between $20,000 and $75,000. We will see more people working more hours, increasing labour supply, Treasury estimates, by around 930,000 hours per week. That's more than double the labour supply impact of the former Liberal government's plan.

I want to dwell on this point for a moment, because on the South Coast supply of labour is a real problem. We've got cafes that can't keep their doors open and farmers who can't harvest their crops because they don't have the workers. The tourism industry in particular is really struggling. Providing more incentive for those sitting on the cusp of the bracket, particularly part-time workers, is completely valuable to these businesses. Providing more incentive for those who are transitioning to retirement, more incentive for women returning to work and more incentive to young people to work while they study will make a huge difference to those businesses that rely on these workers to keep the doors open. It will have a real economic impact on the South Coast, supporting our tourism industry and helping our economic recovery.

I'm a broken record on this, but there is good reason for it. The South Coast is still recovering from the 2019-20 bushfires. We are still feeling those impacts economically, socially and emotionally. We are not recovered. We are not recovered from a pandemic that decimated the industries we rely on—namely tourism, but it impacted everyone. We are not recovered from a dozen disaster declared floods, and that's without even mentioning inflation and the rising cost of living that has made recovery from all those disasters so much more difficult. We have been hit over and over again ever since that terrible summer. We are not back on our feet, and local people need all the support they can get. That's why I'm excited about this plan. That's why I'm excited to see 87 per cent of local people left better off than they would have been if we had stuck to the Liberal Party's plan. It will provide better support for our economy and better encouragement for workforce participation.

Local people demanded that we as the Labor government look at the current economic conditions, that we consider our new reality, not the reality of five years ago when the original plan was put into place. What does our economy need for those conditions we are facing right now? What does our economy need to keep inflation down? What do we need to ease cost-of-living pressure? No-one could have predicted these specific conditions five years ago. We hadn't seen the bushfires, the pandemic, crippling inflation and the rising cost of living. So what we did was listen to the community and to the experts. We looked at the economic conditions and we decided on the right thing to do and the responsible thing to do. We showed our integrity, we stood up for what the Labor Party stands for and we put middle Australia first.

While our 10-point economic plan is bringing down inflation—we've seen it start to moderate and that is incredibly welcome news—we are not out of the woods. The plan the Treasurer has carefully calibrated is making a difference, but we are not being complacent because it is so clear there is more that must be done. So from 1 July this year we will reduce the 19 per cent tax rate to 16 per cent, reduce the 32.5 per cent tax rate to 30 per cent, increase the threshold above which the 37 per cent tax rate applies from $120,000 to $135,000, and increase the threshold above which the 45 per cent tax rate applies from $180,000 to $190,000.

Sixty-four thousand people in my electorate of Gilmore will receive a tax cut under this plan, and 87 per cent of them will be better off than under the former Liberal government's plan. That's what we are delivering here today and that's what local people on the South Coast need.

I am proud to be part of the government that is delivering real cost-of-living relief targeted to where it is needed most. I commend the bill to the House.