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My fellow Australians.
 
We live in the best nation on earth.
 
As you look at all that’s happening around the world today, there is nowhere else you’d rather be than right here in Australia.
 
That’s not just the lottery of good luck. It’s not an accident of geography or a quirk of history.
 
It’s because of our people.
 
The hard work, talent, kindness and aspiration of Australians.
 
Everyone who strives to build a better life for themselves and their families – and pass on better opportunities to their children.
 
Look around you: Parramatta tells that story.
 
People studying hard, starting businesses, creating jobs, giving back to community.
 
From those whose ancestors have known and cared for this land since before people from the First Fleet established farms along the river.
 
To everyone who has chosen Australia as their home and enriched our society with their deep love of our country.
 
The privilege of serving in Government carries a profound responsibility.
 
To measure up to the ambition, optimism and energy of our extraordinary nation.
 
To reward hard work.
 
To nourish aspiration.
 
To help people under pressure, with meaningful and lasting action on the cost of living.
 
And to build for the future.
 
To open the doors of opportunity for the next generation – and widen them.
 
This is the duty we work to uphold every single day: to prove worthy of the Australian people.
 
That’s why, through everything the world has thrown at Australia over the past three years – the worst global inflation in four decades, the biggest international energy crisis in half a century and even now, trade tensions fuelling new global economic uncertainty – our Government has faced these global challenges the Australian way, the Labor way.
 
Not sacrificing jobs or slashing wages.
 
Not leaving people behind.
 
Not cutting the services families depend on.
 
But by staying true to our values – and backing our people.
 
Making the responsible choices to turn a decade of Liberal deficits into back to back Labor surpluses.
 
And meeting our responsibility to Australians under financial pressure.

Having the guts to reform the tax cuts we inherited – so every taxpayer got a tax cut, not just some.
 
Intervening in the energy market to cap the price of gas and coal – and delivering energy bill relief direct to every household and every small business.
 
Making child care cheaper, saving over 1 million families thousands of dollars on average.
 
The Liberals said all this was a waste.
 
They dismissed it as a sugar hit. They called it reckless.
 
They have spent every single day in Opposition raging against everything we have done to help Australians with the cost of living.
 
Always wanting to block, never wanting to build.
 
Wanting people to be worse off.
 
Because they believe – as a matter of Liberal Party principle – that people don’t value something if it’s free.
 
Unless people have to pay for it, they don’t value it.
 
Well, I can tell the Liberal Party this for free.
 
I can tell them:
 
People value Medicare.
 
People value bulk-billing.
 
People value public education.
 
People value public housing.
 
600,000 Australians value the opportunity they’ve been given to train or retrain at free TAFE.
 
Families and small businesses value getting $150 off their energy bill.
 
Aged care workers and early educators and people on the minimum wage value a pay rise.
 
Labor understands what people value.
 
We invest in what people value. 
 
And we do it because Labor values people.
 
That’s what drives each and every member of our Government, each and every day.
 
It’s why we’ve been able to bring inflation down, while getting wages up.
 
When we came to Government less than three years ago, inflation was over 6 per cent and rising.
 
Today it’s 2.4 per cent and falling.
 
Real wages had fallen 5 quarters in a row.
 
Not because of anything that was happening elsewhere in the world, but because low wages were a deliberate design feature of the economy under the Liberals.
 
Under Labor, real wages have grown the last five quarters in a row.
 
Interest rates were going up before the last election.
 
Now they have started to come down.
 
Together, we are turning the corner.
 
And we are making the turn while keeping unemployment low – with more jobs created in this term than ever before in Australian history.
 
Friends
 
Over the past three years, we have worked together to clear away a decade of waste and chaos.
 
And in its place, we’ve laid strong foundations.
 
Now, on the 3rd of May – we are asking Australians for the opportunity to keep building. 
 
Building an economy where we make more things here.
 
An economy where people earn more – because Labor is the party of higher wages.
 
And people keep more of what they earn – because Labor is the party of lower taxes.
 
An economy where equality for women is not seen as an afterthought or an add-on or a question of special interest, it is recognised and championed for what it is – an essential driver of our national success.
 
That’s why we’ve brought the gender pay gap down to historic lows – and taken women’s economic participation to record highs.
 
That’s why we’re expanding Paid Parental Leave and adding superannuation to it.
 
That’s why we have delivered 10 Days Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave.
 
Our Labor Government wants to keep building an industrial relations system that says there is still a place for the fair go in a modern economy.
 
Where people have the flexibility to work from home.
 
And when you get home at the end of the day, you have the right to disconnect.
 
And whether you’re on a mine site, or in a warehouse, if you wear the same uniform, work the same hours, perform the same tasks to the same standard if you work the Same Job, you get the Same Pay.
 
We want to keep building the new housing our nation needs, with our Homes for Australia plan.
 
Training more tradies.
 
Delivering new incentives for construction apprenticeships.
 
And driving the biggest home-building program in Australian history.
 
The last government didn’t even have a housing minister for most of their decade in office.
 
Scott Morrison couldn’t even be bothered adding it to his secret CV.
 
Only Labor will boost supply, build more homes – and make it possible to buy your first home with just a 5 per cent deposit.
 
We will keep building for the best in every stage of education.
 
Building new child care centres, in suburbs and regions where they are needed most.
 
Abolishing the Liberals’ activity test and the disadvantage it inflicted on single parents. 
 
And delivering an historic pay rise for early educators.
 
Taking the next steps to universal, affordable child care.
 
We are delivering better and fairer funding for every school – because Labor invests in the potential of every child.
 
We’ve put public TAFE back at the centre of vocational education and training.
 
And we will make Free TAFE permanent, nationwide.
 
And if we are elected on the 3rd of May, the very first piece of legislation we will bring to the Parliament is our plan to cut student debt by 20 per cent.
 
This reform will save 3 million Australians an average of $5500 each.
 
Labor is the party of education – and we are the party of aspiration.
 
Friends,
 
That is the future we are building across Australia and here in Western Sydney.
 
From Western Sydney International Airport, which I pushed for in my very first speech to Parliament to every measure energising local manufacturing to every piece of infrastructure that connects people and businesses with everything they need, making communities not just liveable, but desirable.
 
That is why a re-elected Labor Government will invest to establish maternity services at the new hospital being built by Chris Minns’ Labor Government at Rouse Hill.
 
Thanks to Labor governments working together, we will deliver the infrastructure and services that families in the growing North West deserve.
 
Labor delivers for Australians – and we build to last.
 
Ours is a proud record of changing the lives of Australians for the better – now, and for generations to come.
 
Delivering financial security through universal superannuation.
 
Delivering a fairer Australia through the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
 
And delivering for the health of Australians through two other powerful Labor legacies.
 
Medicare – which didn’t just give us a better health system or import someone else’s, it invented a truly Australian one.
 
The fact that this card is green and gold is no accident.
 
We take pride in it as Australians, just as we take pride in that other great Labor reform, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
 
Despite opposition from the Liberals, universal and affordable access to medicines through the PBS was an idea that survived to become one of our country’s true pillars of strength.
 
Like Medicare, it is part of the Australian story and one of the most meaningful expressions of the fair go that we have.
 
Let me be clear: The PBS is not for sale.
 
It is not – and never will be – on the bargaining table under Labor.
 
We’re strengthening healthcare by lowering the price of medicines on the PBS to just $25.
 
The lowest it has been since 2004.
 
And we have frozen the PBS co-payment for pensioners and concession cardholders at just $7.70 until the end of this decade.
 
We’ve strengthened Medicare with our Medicare Urgent Care Clinics. We went to the last election promising 50.
 
We’ve delivered 87.
 
And I love speaking with Australians right across our great continent and hearing what a difference they’re making.
 
A vote for Labor is a vote for Medicare.
 
It’s a vote for 50 more Medicare Urgent Care Clinics.
 
It’s a vote for the biggest investment in bulk-billing in Australian history.

For better funding for every public hospital.

For real progress in women’s health.

For 31 new and upgraded Medicare Mental Health Centres.

For thousands more GPs, nurses and midwives.

For making it possible for millions of Australians to see a doctor for free.
 
And I’ll tell you what else it’s a vote for.
 
Today we add to the strengthening Medicare agenda.
 
A re-elected Labor Government will make free, urgent care available to all Australians, in every community, with the launch of 1800 MEDICARE.
 
A 24/7 health advice line and afterhours GP telehealth service, backed by Medicare.
 
You’ll be able to call any time to get expert health advice from a registered nurse. If it’s something that can't wait for your regular GP, you'll be connected to a free GP telehealth consultation.
 
Life isn't 9 to 5. With 1800 MEDICARE, neither is healthcare.
 
From 1 January 2026, 1800 MEDICARE will bring new security and peace of mind to people all over Australia.
 
If it’s late at night and your child is running a temperature you’re worried about, or has a cough that sounds like it’s getting worse.
 
If you know your elderly parent needs help, even though they’re insisting they’re OK.
 
That trained, expert advice is at the other end of the phone.
 
This will take further pressure off people – and off public hospitals.
 
And, in conjunction with our plan to open 50 more Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, it will ensure that free urgent care is within a 20-minute drive away for 4 out every 5 Australians and just a phone call away for every Australian.
 
This is at the heart of Labor’s great mission.
 
And it’s what sets Australia apart from so many other countries.
 
American-style healthcare is decided by what treatment you can afford.
 
In Australia, under Labor, it’s about the care that you need.
 
That’s the meaning of Medicare
 
That’s the promise of Medicare.
 
We built it.
 
We believe in it.

We will protect it.
 
We will strengthen it.
 
And – as sure as night follows day – the Liberals will cut it.
 
Friends,
 
It is the greatest honour of my life to serve as your Prime Minister.
 
To have the opportunity to make a positive difference.
 
And to lead a Government that sees a stronger, safer future for Australia in an ever more uncertain world.
 
The biggest risk to that is the alternative.
 
Peter Dutton struggles to keep some of his policy ideas for just three days – but he wants Australians to give him three years.
 
But look past all the flip-flopping, all the reversals, all the contradictions, and you see a pattern emerge.
 
A risky and expensive nuclear policy he doesn’t want to talk about.
 
He certainly doesn’t want to visit any of the sites.
 
A defence policy that’s little more than a media release.
 
And handouts that disappear after just 12 months.
 
These are policies with huge price tags, but the last thing Peter Dutton ever wants to talk about is where he’s going to get the money from.
 
You won’t be surprised that I don’t share his reluctance.
 
He’s going to get it by ripping into health, education and child care.
 
He’s going to get it by increasing your income tax.
 
He’s going to get it by taking away the Free TAFE that makes it possible for you to build your own future.
 
He’s going to get it by making it harder for families to buy electric vehicles.
 
He’s going to get it by sacking 41,000 people who help Australians in their time of need.
 
If he’s already promising to raise your taxes and increase your HECS debt – you have to ask: What else is there?
 
There is only one certainty with Peter Dutton: He cuts, you pay.
 
Consider the record of our first three years – and contrast it with the damage of the Coalition decade.
 
Never forget Robodebt.
 
Never forget their neglect of older Australians in care.
 
Never forget how they left our military veterans out in the cold.
 
And now their sales pitch to Australia is: Let’s go back.
 
I want Australia to go forward.
 
We are here to do so much more than just repair the damage of our predecessors.
 
We won’t settle for the old status quo.
 
Our nation has the momentum. What’s so important now is to keep building on it.
 
In coming days, Australians have a real choice.
 
A choice between seizing the opportunities before us – or letting the world overtake us.
 
Between reaching for Australia’s extraordinary potential – or cutting into it.
 
A choice between building Australia’s future – or a darker, meaner, nastier reboot of the past.
 
A choice between going forwards – or getting dragged backwards.
 
A choice between backing Australians – or sacking Australians.
 
On the 3rd of May, Australians can choose to build a better future.
 
A future in which no-one is held back and no-one is left behind.
 
A future that we will keep building – together.
 
And for that, there is only one choice.
 
Vote Labor.               
 
ENDS