The first day of a new parliament begins at church with a mixed-dominational service. Tony Burke is speaking from outside this year’s chosen church (it moves around) and when asked about what the new parliament will look like, Burke says:

Well, obviously the House of Representatives on the floor will feel different this time, just because the numbers, the nature of it is very different. Every Parliament feels different in that way. But the expectations on us, I’ve got to say, I don’t feel that different. When we were first elected, people wanted us to get wages moving, they wanted us to be defending Medicare. They wanted us to make sure that people would earn more and keep more of what they earn. Those themes carried us through the campaign and those themes are what we need to get down to this term. Tomorrow, Jason Clare will introduce legislation, big cost-of-living measure, to reduce every student debt by 20%.

There’s people who went to uni and TAFE who carry student debts. For a lot of them, it’s a problem in them trying to get a home loan and to be able to cut that by 20%, that’s one of the things we committed to in that legislation and that will be introduced tomorrow. Immediately following that, there’ll be legislation about early chidehood education centres in making sure that that we’ve got the laws in place to make sure that we are really lifting the standards in every centre, but the horrific stories that we’ve seen in a number of centres, every parent needs to be able to have the confidence that we’ve put the laws in place to be able to address that.