Good government is all about pulling the right levers at the right time and making sure we balance all of the various areas of the budget. As the Treasurer said last night, we sought in all decisions to strike a considered and methodical balance. We need to exercise restraint and keep the pressure off inflation, but we also need to help those people out there who are struggling and ensure that vital services like Medicare and NDIS are delivered to those Australians who need them. Labor has delivered a budget that relieves that pressure. We've delivered a budget that is meaningful and that has significant cost-of-living relief for Australian households.

They have sat on their hands for a decade and watched the coalition foster this housing situation that we are now facing. And now, because there is a bill before the house with some serious action on housing, the most significant package we've seen in decades, they want to complain.

I'm delighted to rise and take note of some of the responses we heard in question time today and particularly to have an opportunity to talk about how the Labor government is powering Australian communities with batteries—and not just individual batteries but community batteries, whereby we can support powering so many homes: 100,000 homes will benefit from this initiative. There are 400 batteries to roll out, and they will power entire communities. They will help entire communities to lower their electricity prices, which I'm very, very proud of.

As the Chair of the Senate Environment and Communications Committee I chaired the inquiry into this bill, and I can assure you that the contributions that we heard from industry, from environment and climate groups, from business and from emitters are much, much more balanced than we are hearing in this chamber tonight.

In decades and centuries gone by, the laws of our state and the colony that preceded it have done so much to deliberately disenfranchise, disempower and disadvantage Aboriginal people. Today we use those laws to do exactly the opposite.

All people are entitled to respect and opportunity and to participate in the social, cultural and economic life of our nation, free from hatred or harassment. Labor is committed to defending the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both at home and abroad. This commitment is central to what Labor stands for, and what we have always stood for.