With young families continually battling increased cost of living pressures, they will benefit from a range of policies released by the Nationals.

Gippsland East MP, Tim Bull, said the common feedback from young families was the rising costs of food, utility bills and household items and it was causing tough decisions to be made.

“One cost some families are forced to forego due to the rising cost of living, is paying for thier children’s sporting activities. We certainly don't want the costs associated with participation to become a barrier to kids having fun and staying active.

“I am a strong believer that participation in sport is important to our youth, putting them around good role models and giving them some good life lessons like losing graciously and winning humbly.

“Our Keeping Kids Moving Program will offer up to one million participants $200 vouchers to support children to participate in a variety of sports, dance, scouts or other active organised recreation.

“It’s a program that will make a big difference and we will work with state sporting associations to ensure they go to the families in need,” Mr Bull said.

Mr Bull said other costs of living policies included:

• Half-price travel on V/Line services and $2 fares on local public transport. This means a return trip to Melbourne will be under $40 instead of $80.

• Stamp Duty relief to help young people enter the property market for first home buyers, that will help up to 7,000 families and young people to buy their first home with forecast savings of $55,000.

• Providing up to $4,400 of rebates to households made up of a $1,400 rebate for solar panels and $3,000 towards the installation of a home battery.

• The Healthy Lunches Policy will provide free healthy lunches to public school students from Prep to Year 12, alleviating the cost of buying lunches each day.

• Allocation of 32,000 dental vouchers of $500 to allow high priority public dental patients to access private dental services as soon as possible.