Budget delivers tax cuts, energy relief and cheaper medicines

Treasurer Jim Chalmers unveiled a series of measures in this year’s federal Budget to address what he said was the government’s “number one priority” – cost-of-living relief.

 

The centrepiece was the Stage 3 tax cuts. This included a tax cut for all taxpayers, with an average cut of $1,888 a year or $36 a week, starting from 1 July 2024.

 

The Budget also awarded all households a $300 electricity credit, which will be applied in quarterly instalments, starting from 1 July 2024.

Cheaper medicines were also part of the Budget. There will now be a one-year freeze on the maximum Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme patient co-payment for everyone with a Medicare card and a five-year freeze for pensioners and other concession cardholders.

 

To help students, the government capped the HELP indexation rate to be the lower of either the consumer price index or wage price index, in a measure backdated to 1 June 2023. That reduces the 2023 indexation rate from 7.1% to 3.2%, and means a student with an average HELP debt of $26,500 will have about $1,200 wiped from their outstanding loans.