MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator MULHOLLAND (Queensland) (16:04): I rise to oppose this urgency motion. While I respect my learned colleague Senator Colbeck, this motion comes straight out of central casting for the Liberal Party. It defends vested interests over working people.
We all remember it was the Liberal Party who went to the last election with a toxic tax agenda. The Liberals proposed higher taxes. The Liberals wanted to repeal our tax cuts for workers.
Every Australian worker would have been financially worse off under a Prime Minister Peter Dutton. Thank God that didn't happen. So we will not be lectured to about taxes by the party that ran for government proposing to increase them—a party who deliberately set policies to cause wages to stagnate for a decade.
Under Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison, life got harder year on year for ordinary Australians—a decade of stagnant wages, a decade of falling productivity, a decade of bulk-billing rates in absolute freefall. That is the Liberal Party record. Now let's talk about Labor's.
Our budget backs Australians who earn their living through work. This is unashamedly a budget for working people. It cuts taxes for more than 14 million Australians, with a permanent reduction in the lowest marginal rate from 16c down to 15c and then to 14c.
That is money in the pocket of every worker every year, ongoing, not a one-off sugar hit. That is permanent relief for working people. We're also rebuilding the healthcare system that the Liberals deliberately ran into the ground.
We promised urgent care clinics across the country at the last election, and we've opened 137 of them right across Australia. I'm proud to say there are 26 clinics in Queensland alone, in Brisbane, Buderim, Cairns, Capalaba, Carindale, Gladstone, Deception Bay, Greenslopes, Mackay and, most recently, Caloundra, where we opened a clinic last week following the Prime Minister's visit to the Sunshine Coast.
Since then, the Caloundra Medicare Urgent Care Clinic has seen over 110 patients in the first few days of opening—no appointment, no out-of-pocket costs, just your Medicare card. We know that urgent care clinics are driving competition in the marketplace, coupled with our bulk-billing incentives, and bulk billing is going back up under Labor after those opposite tried to end it.
From November 2025 to January this year, more than 18 per cent of GP visits were bulk-billed, the biggest quarterly increase since the pandemic. In communities like Longman on the north side of Brisbane, around Caboolture, bulk-billing rates have jumped 30 per cent. That is real cost-of-living relief for real families.
Senator Colbeck's motion talks about who this government's budget empowers, and I will tell him proudly that this budget empowers working people. We've delivered a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators, who are predominantly women—workers who were chronically underpaid and undervalued under that side of politics. A typical educator is now earning more than $150 more a week under Labor.
From July next month, paid parental leave rises to 26 weeks—six months of government funded leave for families welcoming a new child, up from 18 weeks when we first came to government in 2022. The Liberals didn't support it. One Nation didn't support it.
It was Labor. In the last week, Australians got a front-row seat to see what a Liberal-One Nation government would look like and deliver for working families, and that is a slap in the face to the 1.4 million children in early education and child care and their families who rely on child care. Those opposite don't support the childcare subsidy.
They'd rather see families pay more for childcare every single day. The three-day guarantee? They didn't support it; they voted against it.
A pay rise for early educators? One Nation mocked it last week. What is on offer from those opposite under a Liberal-One Nation government?
Questioning women who take time off to be with their new child. You cannot champion family values in this country and undervalue the work of working women in our society. You can't say you support workers while undermining working women in this country.
Australians are being sold a pup from those opposite. One Nation say they stand up for working people, but all they do is take their marching orders from wealthy billionaires.