Cost of Living

The Labor Government is prioritising cost of living relief for everyday Australians.

Since coming to Government, we’ve repeatedly cut taxes for all 14 million Australian taxpayers, saving the average taxpayer around $30,000 over the next decade.

In the 2026 Budget, we’ve also introduced a new instant $1,000 deduction tax deduction and a $250 Working Australians Tax Offset.

Since 2022, we’ve given every Australian household over $450 in energy bill relief, plus up to $250 in targeted relief for eligible households.

That’s in addition to the $500 energy rebate we have given pensioners, veterans and concession card holders.

We’re investing $430 million over four years to deliver three days of subsidised childcare for every child who needs it.

The 3 Day Guarantee replaces the punitive Activity Test, which excluded children from the system because of their parents’ work or study activity.

Under this scheme, 96% of families are better off - that’s 1.26 million families.

We've lowered the maximum cost of prescription medication on the PBS to just $25 - the most affordable they’ve been in more than two decades.

And we've introduced 60 day prescriptions for more than 300 medicines on the PBS, saving patients up to $189.60 per medicine per year.

Since we came to Government, the Fair Work Commission has lifted the national minimum wage every single year - a cumulative increase of more than $9,000.

We’ve also funded a 23% pay rise for aged care workers and a 15% pay rise for early childhood educators.

We’ve wiped over 20% of all student debt, totalling $16 billion, for around three million Australians.

We’ve changed the way HECS debts are indexed to make sure that student debt never grows faster than wages.

And we’ve cut the repayment rate and increased the repayment threshold to $67,000, saving the average person $680 per year.

As of 1 July 2026, we've expanded the Paid Parental Leave Scheme to 6 months, giving families up to $30,000 plus super.

Since the expansion of the Paid Parental Leave Scheme began, parents of more than 46,000 children have already benefited.

We’ve also boosted the Family Tax Benefit for over 1.2 million families to help with the cost of raising their children.

We've given $30 million to the ACCC to help crack down on super-market price-gouging, and $2.1 million to crack down on excessive surcharge fees.

We've banned debit card surcharges, saving Australians around $1.6 billion in card surcharges every year and savings businesses a further $910 million per year.