SHOUT OUT FROM SHAYNE – FEDERAL Member for Blair
By Shayne Neumann
IN the four months since the Federal Election, and the first four weeks of the new Parliament, the Albanese Labor Government has been focused on delivering on our election commitments to build Australia’s future and provide real cost-of-living relief.
Our election commitment to protect the weekend and overtime pay of millions of Australians by enshrining penalty rates into law passed the Parliament in the last sitting fortnight.
The Government’s legislation to make medicines even cheaper also passed the Parliament, delivering on our commitment to strengthening Medicare. This reform brings the cost of a PBS script down to just $25, or $7.70 for concession card holders – the same price as 2004.
These measures build on the commitments delivered in recent weeks to ease cost-of-living pressures, including cutting student debt by 20 per cent to save around 23,000 apprentices and students in Blair an average of $5500 each.
On top of this, we are expanding access to MRIs with two more MRI machines in Ipswich able to provide Medicare-funded scans and imaging services since July 1.
During the election, Labor announced that first home buyers would be able to get into the housing market with just a five per cent deposit.
Recently, we announced this will start from October 1, instead of next year, and for all first home buyers, with no caps on places or income limits.
This builds on our expanded Home Guarantee Scheme, which has already helped more than 3400 people in Blair get into homeownership with the support of the Albanese Government – the highest rate of take-up in the country.
On August 7, I hosted a Blair Economic Reform Roundtable in Ipswich, generating a range of ideas that fed into the national Economic Reform Roundtable held in Canberra on August 19-21.
Our plans to build more homes and to make it easier for young Australians to buy their first home were at the centre of our campaign, and they were backed in by my roundtable and are at the heart of our economic agenda.
We are delivering on these commitments by cutting red tape holding back construction, training more tradies through Free TAFE and our new incentives for construction apprenticeships.
I am proud of what we have achieved to ease cost of living and help locals earn more and keep more of what they earn, and we will continue to build on that.
