Adjournment

Labor Supporting Australians

VIDEO

 We've returned to parliament after the winter break, with every Australian taxpayer having received a tax cut—and that's every taxpayer in my community. The government have been focused again on our priority around cost-of-living relief, as well as continuing our legislative agenda to tackle the big issues and the big things that we as a country have to get to work on. One of those this fortnight has been the Future Made in Australia legislation brought into the parliament. We want Australia to have more economic security. The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, introduced into the parliament an important plan that will see us investing in a future made in Australia. The plan will bring new jobs and opportunities to communities across the country. Our plan will make Australia a renewable energy powerhouse. It will maximise the economic and industrial benefits of the international move to net zero and secure Australia's place in a changing global economic and strategic landscape.

There's news on renewables, with the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, having just approved Australia's biggest renewable energy project ever that will create 7,000 jobs. SunCable's Australia-Asia power link solar farm will generate enough energy to power three million Australian homes, generating almost six times the amount of energy a large nuclear reactor could deliver. The Albanese government is getting on with building cheaper, cleaner and renewable energy. We've now approved enough renewable energy to power seven million homes. We have also approved a new wind farm in Victoria's north-west that will power 202,000 Victorian homes and help make power bills cheaper.

It has been National Skills Week while we've been here, and I'm so proud that as a government we've helped more than half a million Australians enrol in fee-free TAFE, delivering cost-of-living relief for students and helping Australians get better paid jobs.

We've also got legislation in the parliament this week to wipe $3 billion in student debt for three million young Australians. This will help many students and young people with the increasing pressures of the cost of living and their growing HECS debts.

It has been a big fortnight for gender equality. The Albanese government is focused on taking action on gender equality. This week we learned the good news that the gender pay gap is at an historic low of 11.5 per cent. Women's average weekly earnings have increased by $173 a week since we took office in 2022, and this is not an accident. This is about supporting the Fair Work Commission to raise wages for our lowest paid. It's about a 15 per cent pay rise for aged-care workers and a 15 per cent pay rise for early education and childcare workers.

This morning, Minister Rishworth introduced the most recent piece of paid parental leave legislation. This is critical for working families, and the bill will put superannuation on paid parental leave. This is an enormous change and means that families will end up with more superannuation for their later life.

We've also had legislation to ban non-consensual sexually explicit deepfake content this week. This is important, particularly in our community in the west of Melbourne, as this has seen us in the headlines recently. Sharing deepfake sexually explicit material is a damaging form of abuse that overwhelmingly targets women and girls and inflicts deep harm on victims. We have zero tolerance for it and have introduced legislation to ban it.

This week has also seen the anniversary of the Julia Gillard government, on 21 August 2010, something I know that those at home are celebrating.

We started this fortnight with the Olympics finishing and with celebrations in the private member's motion in the chamber, where some here joined me in congratulating our medallists and all of our competitors.

This week I also got to meet with Victorian education minister Ben Carroll while he was in Canberra to talk about our local schools, and, as an educator, I was keen to have some time face to face with Ben to explain to him some of the needs in the local schools in our community.

It has been a fantastic fortnight here in Canberra. I'm looking forward to being home for a couple of weeks and then coming back to get on with the legislative agenda beyond that.