A $300 rebate on energy bills for every home, increases to rent assistance and a freeze on medicine prices are the headline initiatives in what the federal government says is a $7.8bn cost-of-living relief package in the budget.
From July, all households will get a $300 credit automatically applied to their electricity bills in quarterly instalments – essentially lowering each quarterly bill by $75. Some 1 million small businesses will get a $325 discount. The revamped stage-three tax cuts, announced in January, are the “centrepiece” of the budget, the government said, with all 13.6 million taxpayers to pay less. The average taxpayer will get a tax cut of $1,888, or $36 a week, in changes the government has painted as cost-of-living relief, pointing out nearly 3 million lower-income Australians and 5.8 million women will get larger tax relief under Labor’s plan than they would have in the original Coalition tax plan.
Pensioners and concession card holders will only pay a maximum $7.70 co-payment for medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for the next five years, under a freeze of prescriptions to be included in a to-be-finalised community pharmacy agreement. For the general public, prescription co-payments will be frozen at $31.60 for the next two years.