Thursday, 18 June 2026

 Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:33): Every decision our government makes comes back to this question: does it help families and does it back workers? Does it make life easier for people who are doing it tough? That is why we are protecting working from home. We are protecting it because it means less time in traffic, less money on petrol and parking but also, importantly for families, more time with kids, more money for groceries and more money for those bills like school costs. It is also why our 20 per cent off car registration rebate is putting real money back into people’s pockets.

Tim Richardson interjected.

Jacinta ALLAN: I can give the house an update on the number of applications – thank you, member for Mordialloc. As of this morning there have been 2,652,718 applications. What is also important, the other number here that is also important, is that $348 million has already been paid directly into people’s accounts. Do you know where that money is going? It is going on those grocery bills. It is going on those rent and mortgage repayments. It is going on those things that keep families up at night worrying how they will make ends meet. And we are going to keep going. It is why we have got free kinder, free TAFE, free urgent care and of course half-price public transport all the way through to the end of the year, because we back families and we back workers.

We acknowledge that there is a different way, a One Nation way, where we would see women being paid less, workers being sacked and, of all things, the SBS being turned off in the middle of the World Cup. We are going to back workers and back families, not like the Liberal Party, who are in a right-wing partnership with One Nation. We are going to stand up and fight for workers in Victoria every single day.