Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

People have twigged that this government and its budget take the axe to the young, the old, the sick and the poor, and let Gina Rinehart and her like off the hook. Today this government is moving to deliver on its promise to its big business and fossil-fuel backers. It is easy to take the axe to people who cannot defend themselves. It takes courage to stand up to the wealthy and powerful, but a coward takes the axe to the people who cannot defend themselves. That is what this Prime Minister and this government have done, and people are increasingly realising it.

People know that today the government is coming in here and saying, 'We want people under 30 to spend six months of every year without any income at all'; 'We want people who have put in and worked all their lives to now work for an extra three years until they drop, and they won't have the same kind of pension to rely on that they thought they might have before'; and 'We are going to ask those who can least afford it to now pay to go to the doctor, even if it means that they might not go. That's alright, we don't mind deterring them, because we want them to pay'. At the same time as it is doing that, the government is coming in here and saying, 'We are now going to repeal the one measure that is on the books at the moment that has a chance of giving this country some revenue security.'

We hear the government say that there is a budget crisis. There is a crisis—a revenue crisis. At the moment, the amount of revenue that this government is raising is less than it was under its fabled predecessor, John Howard—so much so that if we started raising revenue as a proportion of GDP at the same level as we did under John Howard's government, we would have between an extra $10 billion and $30 billion a year. That means that you do not have to cut schools or hospitals. That means that you do not have to say to people, 'You now have to pay to go and see the doctor.' It means saying to young people, 'You do not have to spend six months of every year without any income at all.'

It is becoming increasingly clearer to the Australian population that we have a clear choice. You can have a budget and a set of legislation for the one per cent or you can have a budget for the 99 per cent. This government is doing what the people who paid for it to get elected wanted it to do, which is deliver for the one per cent. It is coming in here saying, 'We will repeal the mining tax'—something that that arch-Marxist former Treasury secretary, Ken Henry, thought was a good idea. Why do we not take the opportunity to secure the benefits of a once-in-a-generation mining boom to set this country up for a time when the rest of the world tells us to stop digging? That time may come sometime soon.

There is every risk that if we agree with this debate management motion and then subsequently move to repeal the bills, we are going to find ourselves waking up in 15 years time to find that this country is a hollowed out, uneducated quarry. If we really want to address the revenue crisis in this country, if we really did say, 'Maybe we can ask those wealthy multinational mining companies that send 83 per cent of their profits overseas to pay a little bit more instead of sick people having to pay more to go and see the doctor', we could find ourselves balancing this country's books and doing it in a much fairer way.

If we allow this motion to pass, we have lost the opportunity to fix and increase the mining tax. I hear those opposite shouting out, 'It doesn't raise any revenue!'. You know that is not true. It does raise revenue, but it does not raise anywhere near enough. There are some problems with the mining tax that we have pointed out many times: the rebate for state royalties, the rate of the tax, the problems that allow write-downs by the mining companies—all of those things were pointed out at the time by the Greens. We said at the time that we were worried that it would not raise enough revenue. If you, members of the government, think it is not raising enough revenue, let us fix it and increase it. The only reason for repealing the mining tax is delivering for the likes of Gina Rinehart. This government has a clear choice: do you want to deliver for the likes of Gina Rinehart, or do you want to deliver for the people? The Australian Greens know squarely where we stand, and we will be opposing this gag.

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