E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
UNITING MIRINJANI WESTON, CANBERRA
TUESDAY, 30 JUNE 2026
SUBJECTS: Wage increases, Housing market, Tax cuts, 1 July cost of living relief, Superannuation, Liberal Party rebrand
DAVID SMITH, MEMBER FOR BEAN: My name is David Smith, the Federal Member for Bean. One of the real privileges I have is to represent communities like Uniting Care and Mirinjani. It is an extraordinary community, both of staff, so many who provide services to generations of Canberrans and the residents here who get such amazing care. And it’s such a privilege to be able to represent you in Parliament and such a privilege to be part of an Albanese Government that’s committed to backing in aged care workers, aged care communities like Uniting Care and Mirinjani. I also wanted to shout out to the Health Services Union, who do such a fantastic job all around the country representing aged care workers, alongside the other aged care unions.
And to talk about how we’re going to continue to back in communities like this, I’d like to pass to my good friend Jim Chalmers.
JIM CHALMERS, TREASURER: Thanks, Dave, for having us in your patch, but particularly to Sharon and the team here at Uniting. Thank you so much for the ability to spend some time here today. We’re here for two reasons – first of all to say thank you to you and all the important work that you do, acknowledging the HSU as well and others. Wonderful place here, wonderful home for a lot of Canberrans. And so we’re here to say thank you.
But we’re also here to say that tomorrow is a really important day when it comes to cost of living relief. This Albanese Labor government is delivering tax cuts. We are delivering a stronger budget bottom line. We’re delivering a fairer tax system for first home buyers. And from tomorrow we are delivering more help with the cost of living. If you think about this Government, it’s been around for 1500 days now, every single day we’ve been focused on these cost of living challenges. But tomorrow, the 1st of July, is an especially important day.
Tomorrow we cut taxes again. We boost wages again. We extend paid parental leave. We pay superannuation on payday and we extend the cut to the fuel excise as well. This is the cost of living relief that Australians need and deserve. This is cost of living relief which steps up from tomorrow, the 1st of July.
Now, when it comes to our tax reform package, it’s all about cutting taxes for workers, making it fairer for first home buyers and making the system fairer more broadly as well. And the tax cuts which come in from tomorrow are one of the five tax cuts that this Government is bringing in, which means for an average worker the benefit of more than $2,800 when you add those five tax cuts up.
And when it comes to wages, if you even think about aged care workers, the boost tomorrow to the minimum wage and to award wages means for a personal care worker about an extra $59 a week, for a registered nurse an extra $86 a week and an enrolled nurse an extra $67 a week. So this is a government which cuts taxes, boosts wages and helps with the cost of living. And you’ll see more of that cost of living tomorrow, the 1st of July.
We know even with the progress we’ve made on inflation, even with petrol and diesel prices coming down considerably, we know that people are still under pressure, and that’s why we’re providing this extra cost-of-living help.
Now, the three right-wing parties in the Parliament, they share a divisive, anti-worker, anti‑housing agenda, which would make things worse rather than better for people who are under cost-of-living pressure. If you think about petrol, this week for the first time we’ve seen petrol and diesel prices lower than they were before the war in the Middle East began. But we know there’s still a lot of uncertainty. We know that people are still under pressure. That’s why we’re extending that fuel tax cut for another month, beginning from tomorrow. So all of this is about helping people with the cost of living. Tomorrow is a really important day in that regard.
The last point I’d make before I hand you over to Tanya is to say this: even with all of this cost-of-living help that we are providing, as we step up and step in tomorrow to help people with the pressures that they are facing, we’re still improving the budget bottom line. We have new numbers this week, which show that for the end of this year, debt is $200 billion lower than it was projected to be at this time when we came to office - $200 billion less debt and smaller deficits for this year as well. We are managing the Budget in the most responsible way at the same time as we are delivering tax cuts and cost of living help, delivering real change in the tax system to make it fairer for first home buyers.
Now, a couple of really important changes which come in tomorrow are the changes to the paid parental leave and also the indexation of payments, and so it’s wonderful in addition to having Sam Rae here, the Aged Care Minister, Dave Smith, the local member, we’ve got Tanya Plibersek as well, and I’ll hand over to her.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Well, thanks so much, Treasurer. Australia now has the lowest gender pay gap in history, and that’s because of deliberate decisions we’ve taken as a government that benefit workers in fantastic facilities like this. We also have a paid parental leave scheme that Labor built last time we were in government and Labor has doubled since coming back to government during the Albanese Labor Government.
Someone receiving paid parental leave now will get on the 1st of July the full six months of paid parental leave. They’ll receive more money – over a thousand dollars a week – they’ll receive more flexibility with more time off together for mum and dad, and more people will be eligible. So more time, more money, more flexibility and more people eligible from the 1st of July.
This is an investment in workforces like this, because we know that Australian women for too long were some of the very few around the developed world that didn’t have a paid parental leave scheme. Labor introduced paid parental leave. Labor has expanded it and from the 1st of July – tomorrow – we’re expanding it again.
SAM RAE, MINISTER FOR AGED CARE: Thank you, Tanya, thank you, Jim. It’s such a privilege to be here today with some parliamentary colleagues – and good of Dave to host us – but, more importantly from my perspective, some amazing aged care colleagues. People who come to work every single day, who deliver with their care and their compassion and their love for their job, the kind of dignified care that we want every older Australian to be able to access.
And, of course, Jim has made clear today being the 30th of June necessarily means tomorrow is the 1st of July, and on the 1st of July we see the latest in a long string of aged care wage rises for these workers just like I’m standing with here. Tomorrow’s wage rises will be worth roughly three to four thousand dollars for an aged care worker on the award, and that’s on top of the nearly $28,000 of wage rises that your average aged care registered nurse has received since we came to office. It’s part of an $18 billion investment by our Government in aged care workers.
And the reality is, if we want older Australians to receive the very best care, they need to receive it from the very best people. We’ve got to value those people, and we’ve got to pay them properly. Now, of course, these wage rises come on top of five tax cuts, paid parental leave, cheaper medicines, health care and a fairer system so that we have more houses and more home owners for workers across Australia.
So I just want to take this opportunity to say to every aged care worker here with us today – Sharon and all her team – as well as every aged care worker across the country, thank you so much for the work that you do to look after older people. Thank you for coming on this very ambitious reform journey with us to make sure that we’ve got a world-class aged care system. And we’re all looking forward to continuing to work really closely with you to make sure we get the best outcomes for older people, which we can do by supporting you through policies such as those that come into force tomorrow.
On that note, I suspect there are a couple of questions; Jim might want to step back to the microphone.
JOURNALIST: I might start with you, Minister, while you’re there. The Coalition and the Greens are calling for in the Senate a motion to introduce more human oversight into the new aged care assessment tool. Is that something the Government would be open to getting on board with?
RAE: First of all, let me be really clear – there’s misinformation going around here. The assessment process is much reformed. It’s called a single assessment process. It’s been consolidated from a number of different assessment processes to make things better for older Australians. And there are human beings involved at every step of that process. A human being conducts the clinical assessment for the older person. There’s another human being that then views that assessment before it’s signed off on. And then there’s a third option for a review process in the department by a third human being if necessary.
Now, the bill that you’re speaking about was only introduced last week. It came pretty late into the program. Nevertheless, initial consideration of it would suggest that there’s perhaps something of a cost in the order of $6 to $11 billion associated with that bill, and wait times, additional wait times, for older Australians to access care of something around five months. So we’ll go through our usual processes and have a look at the detail of the bill. There are some concerning elements there. I think the intent of the bill is admirable, but there’s more policy work that’s required, and we’ll go through our usual caucus processes to determine how we’re going to respond to that.
JOURNALIST: And just in terms of aged care as a whole, we are always hearing about how there’s not enough beds. You can have amazingly paid workers or, you know, enough workers to go around, but there sometimes just aren’t enough placements. What can be done in that field beyond just sort of more investment?
RAE: My colleagues and I in the Parliament and the Government talk about the challenges that we have with an aging population all the time. Next year, 90,000 Australians will have an 80th birthday. Now, 15 years ago, when we were last in Government, that was just 15,000 Australians – so that’s 600 per cent growth in 80-year-old birthdays or 80th birthdays in 15 years. That’s the scale of the challenge that we’re facing with an ageing population.
With that comes rapidly increasing demand for aged care services. Of course, residential aged care services such as this wonderful facility that we’re in today as well as many Australians, where it’s safe and appropriate to do so, want to age at home in their own communities close to loved ones. We want to support them to do that. That’s why we’ve invested in an additional 83,000 packages of home care just this financial year. The last of those will be rolled out today, incidentally. We’ve got another 32,000 funding packages of care next year. That’s why we’re investing in these extraordinary people behind him - $18 billion of wage rises – so that we have amazing human beings like this that can deliver the very best care, be it in the home setting or the residential care setting like this.
So we’ll keep making the ambitious reforms that we began in 2022 to make sure that we’ve got a system that responds to both that ageing population and the evolving expectations of Australians about the type of care that our older people receive.
JOURNALIST: Treasurer, are there any concerns that these wage increases will need to be passed along to the consumer at some point, and how do you mitigate that?
CHALMERS: Well, there are inflation challenges in our economy and not because important workers like these are paid too much. You know, we’ve got an inflation challenge in our economy because of the war in the Middle East and some other longer-standing pressures as well. We see decent pay and conditions as part of the solution to cost-of-living pressures, not part of the problem, and we’ve been really clear about that. And we’re really proud to stand with these workers and workers right around the country like them who need and deserve these – this better pay, which will kick in from tomorrow.
You know, we are really proud that we have stepped in and stepped up to make sure that aged care workers, early childhood workers and other really important workers in our economy and industries dominated by women, that they receive the pay that they need and deserve to do this really important work.
Now, we have an inflation challenge in our economy, even though the last couple of months we’ve seen headline inflation come down in welcome ways, we’re actually making more progress already since the Budget in the fight against inflation than we were anticipating even at Budget time. Instead of inflation at 5 per cent in the middle of the year, Treasury now expects it to be more like four and a quarter per cent. So that’s really welcome and important progress, and we’ve been able to make that progress at the same time as we are paying workers properly in our economy.
JOURNALIST: I was lucky enough to have a chat with some of the residents just while you were doing your tour.
CHALMERS: Great, great.
JOURNALIST: Some of them say they feel like their prices here are increasing every couple of months. Is there something the government can do to cap those price increases? I mean, rental increases never increase every three months. Why is it different here?
CHALMERS: Well, we understand that there are still cost-of-living pressures in our economy, whether it comes to living costs or other costs that people are facing. And that’s one of the reasons why we’re providing in a whole range of different ways this cost of living relief which kicks in from tomorrow. Whether it’s the indexation of payments, whether it’s tax cuts, wage increases, superannuation –
JOURNALIST: But these residents aren’t earning wages, you know –
CHALMERS: No, but some of them would have access to indexed payments. And so the point that I’m making is, you know, for every day of the 1500 days that this Government has been in office, the cost-of-living has been a priority. But tomorrow is an especially important day because we’re not just providing cost-of-living relief in one way or another; we’re providing it in a whole range of ways, including when it comes to the indexation of payments to help people keep up with the cost of living.
JOURNALIST: Analysis suggests your Budget has had an impact on auction clearance rates. When do you expect things to stabilise?
CHALMERS: Well, we’ve seen some volatility in auction clearance rates even predating the Budget, and that’s because whether it’s auction clearances or house prices, there are a number of factors at play – interest rates, broader economic conditions – which go beyond the Budget’s changes that we announced on Budget night. Now, if you look at last weekend, the preliminary auction clearance rates in aggregate, they came up across the capital cities. They were pretty steady in Sydney, they came down a bit in Melbourne. And that reflects the fact that there are different markets behaving a little bit differently. But house prices are continuing to grow a bit more slowly nationally in aggregate, even as we’ve had this volatility which predated Budget night.
JOURNALIST: I’ve got another question – this is from Channel Nine – does Matt Kean have any questions to answer after travelling to COP on the taxpayers’ dime but was then advocating for a private colony at the summit?
CHALMERS: I beg your pardon? What was the last part of that?
JOURNALIST: Does Matt Kean have any questions to answer after travelling to COP on the taxpayers’ dime, but was then advocating for a private colony at the summit?
CHALMERS: I’m not aware of any of those details, I’m sorry.
JOURNALIST: And the last is: should people go fill up their car today with the excise potentially finishing in a month?
CHALMERS: Well, a couple of things about that. It’s quite remarkable that for the first time we’re seeing petrol and diesel prices lower than they were at the start of the war in the Middle East. Fuel prices have come down very considerably and in very welcome ways. And our fuel excise cut is part of the story, but also, we’ve seen some welcome developments in the Middle East playing out in global oil markets.
Now, we have extended this petrol price relief really for three reasons: firstly and most importantly it is to provide more cost-of-living relief for motorists. Secondly, because there’s still uncertainty in the Middle East, and people are still under pressure. And, thirdly, we wanted to make sure that we smooth out any of the impacts at servos in communities right around Australia as the support tapers away.
And so we’ve gone for this very responsible, targeted, temporary, tapered extension to the fuel excise cut for good reason. The ACCC has also warned the petrol retailers and suppliers not to take motorists for mugs, to make sure that when there are – there is an extension in petrol price relief that the Government is providing, that that’s passed on in the appropriate way to motorists.
This is just another way that we are delivering for motorists, delivering for workers and parents, first home buyers and delivering real change at the same time as we help people through a difficult period brought to us by a war in the Middle East. Now, the end of this war can’t come soon enough. We need the ceasefire to stick. There have been some welcome developments, but in the meantime, people are still under pressure, and we’re stepping in to help them.
JOURNALIST: Treasurer, just one from [indistinct], if that’s all right. So net debt will be a trillion dollars this year. Will Australia ever pay it off?
CHALMERS: Gross debt will be $200 billion lower at this point than it was in 2022 when we came to office. So we have made considerable, remarkable progress cleaning up the trillion dollars of debt that were left to us by our Liberal and National predecessors. Debt is down by hundreds of billions of dollars compared with the trajectory that we inherited. That’s the first point.
The second point is if you look at the monthly figures released by Katy Gallagher on Friday – Katy’s department on Friday, you can see that we are making more progress on Budget repair than was even anticipated at Budget time. We now expect the deficit for this year – which finishes today – to be lower than what it was in the Budget and we expect debt to be lower as well.
Now, our responsible economic management is getting debt down, getting the deficits down and providing cost-of-living relief at the same time. And these are very welcome developments.
JOURNALIST: How long will it take to pay down a trillion dollars of debt, though?
CHALMERS: Well, if you look at the trajectory of debt in this country, when we came to office we were expected to cross over a trillion dollars years ago. And because of our responsible economic management we’ve been able to get that trajectory much lower. In the figures that have been released this week, we haven’t yet crossed that trillion dollar threshold. Under the Liberals we would have crossed it a couple of years ago. It’s a couple of hundred billion dollars lower than the trajectory that we inherited. That’s saving Australians on debt interest costs as well. This is a government which has delivered two surpluses and got the deficits down considerably, and we expect the deficit to be smaller still in the year that finishes today.
JOURNALIST: Two EY grads at Commonwealth Bank are facing criminal charges for accessing the Prime Minister’s personal bank account. Do you have concerns that there are security breaches in Australia’s biggest bank?
CHALMERS: I need to be really careful not to interfere with any legal processes which are underway, but I think on the face of it any developments of that kind are incredibly concerning, not just in relation to the PM’s details but any Australians’ details. And so in general that’s what I would say about that. I assume that there are now legal and other processes to play out, and I don’t want to get in the way of those.
JOURNALIST: And your government preaches about, you know, helping out young people, wanting to address intergenerational inequality. Do you think that 18-year-olds working part-time should be entitled to super payments from their employers?
CHALMERS: I think this is a really important issue. In fact, I met with a delegation of young workers just last week, brought to Canberra by the SDA, because I do think this is a really important issue. We’re engaging with unions, with the super sector, with young people about this. We’re always looking for ways to strengthen the superannuation system. You know, it’s why, for example, next year we’ve extended the low-income super tax offset to benefit more than a million workers, particularly people on low incomes, particularly younger people, because there’s always more work to do to make the superannuation system stronger for working people in this country so they get the retirement that they deserve.
So that’s the point I would make about that.
Now, the higher priority, the highest priority for us right now in superannuation is the big change that comes in tomorrow. And tomorrow we begin paying superannuation with wages. The reason we’re doing that is for too long, people have missed out on the super that they worked so hard for and that they’re entitled to. And so this payday super change will mean thousands of extra dollars at retirement for workers. It will be particularly good for younger workers, more vulnerable workers and lower-paid workers to make sure that they get that super that they’ve worked so hard for. So that’s our priority, and that’s our focus when it comes to superannuation. We’ll continue to engage with young people and unions and the super sector more broadly –
JOURNALIST: So you won’t commit to teenage super?
CHALMERS: Well, we’re engaging with people on it. I think it’s a really important issue. You know, right now, you can only get super under 18 if you work 30 hours or more. We’ve had this raised with us. And I’ve been engaging with young people on it because I think it’s a really important issue. But for the time being, the focus is on boosting the LISTO and introducing payday super. It kicks in tomorrow. It’s a really important reform.
JOURNALIST: Treasurer, last one. Melissa McIntosh was on Sky yesterday, suggesting the Liberal Party needed a rebrand. Do you think the Liberal and Coalition need a rebrand?
CHALMERS: On Angus Taylor’s watch, the Liberal Party is circling the drain, and that’s really clear. Now, Angus Taylor said that the reason he had to take over from Sussan Ley was because they were performing so badly. They’re performing worse under Angus Taylor than they were under Sussan Ley. And I think that those comments from Melissa McIntosh were quite strange. The Liberal Party doesn’t need a rebrand; it needs a completely different approach when it comes to, for example, tax cuts, when it comes to cost-of-living help.
Now, the three right-wing parties in this country are united by this divisive anti-worker, anti-housing agenda. And I think Angus Taylor’s efforts to kind of out One Nation, One Nation just look more and more pathetic by the day. And that’s why they’re circling the drain on his watch. They’re all the same. The three right-wing parties are all the same. They don’t support these tax cuts that are coming tomorrow. They don’t support our cost-of-living relief. They don’t support decent pay and conditions for workers like the workers we’re hanging out with today. And I think that explains their current political predicament. Thanks very much.
ENDS
