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

We are at risk of heading towards a recession. We've got wages flatlining. The climate crisis is hitting agriculture and tourism, with communities still trying to recover from the devastating bushfires we've seen. We've got sluggish manufacturing and construction. And the Reserve Bank is now doing everything it can, but it is running out of bullets. We are heading towards a cliff, but the Prime Minister is refusing to grab the steering wheel. It is his assumption that everything will be okay, but everything is not okay.

We are confronting a coronavirus, which is coming at us like a freight train; the climate crisis; an inequality crisis; and a jobs crisis. Finally the Prime Minister has acknowledged that there might be some need to stimulate the economy and, in his words, 'ensure some cashflow'. So the question is: if we're to avoid recession and we're to deal with the inequality crisis that is gripping us with inequality at a seven-year high, what is the best way to tackle the inequality crisis and ensure Australia does not head towards recession as the Prime Minister refuses to put his hands on the wheel?

He's spoken about cashflow. The best way to get more money moving in the economy is to provide it to those at the bottom who are living below the poverty line, because they are going to go and spend it on essentials like food. And that, in turn, is going to help people like our farmers who are going to grow that food. We have a situation at the moment where people who are looking for work—because the government hasn't created enough jobs in the economy for them to take—are living below the poverty line. Not only that, you could in fact be a full-time worker in this country and the minimum wage is so low that you could be below the poverty line.

Let's think about those people who are on Newstart and youth allowance. They are getting by on a very, very small amount of money that is below the poverty line and is, in fact, a barrier to finding work. We need to lift Newstart and youth allowance by at least $95 a week. It has not been lifted for years and, as a result, it is a barrier to people finding jobs and people are doing it tough. This is a golden opportunity to both stimulate the economy and lift people out of poverty by lifting Newstart and youth allowance by at least $95 a week, because that money is going to be spent on essentials. There's some talk from the government about 'Maybe we'll offer tax cuts to people who are already well-off.' A lot of that is going to go to pay down the record debt that people are in because housing is so expensive and mortgages are so high. But if you want to ensure that the money is going to find its way back into the economy, then let's lift Newstart and let's lift youth allowance, because we will be tackling inequality, lifting people out of poverty and stimulating the economy, and that is what the Green New Deal is about. It is about tackling the crises that this country is facing, avoiding recession and stimulating the economy while making sure that we close the inequality gap in this country that is at a seven-year high. So, if the Prime Minister wants to take action with the economic crises that we're facing and the inequality crises that we're facing, he should lift Newstart and youth allowance.

In a wealthy country like Australia, no-one should go without a home, but we have an affordability crisis in this country. We have homelessness rising. In my area of Victoria, there are 82,000 people on the waiting list trying to get into public housing. I have spoken to pregnant women who, at the moment, are living in crisis accommodation and are likely to be in crisis accommodation when they have their babies because there is no vacancy in the public housing waiting list for them. Just imagine that. Imagine you are pregnant and you know that you're going to have your baby in a couple of months and you don't have a place to live. That is where we are at in modern-day, wealthy Australia.

Meanwhile, this government keeps locking young people out of the housing market by providing billions of dollars in subsidies to people who've already got two, three, four homes to go and buy their fifth or sixth. That not only is a drain on the public purse but keeps bumping up the prices of housing so that young people who think they might be in with a chance of buying a house go along to auctions and keep getting outbid by someone who's already got a couple of houses. That person who's got a couple of houses knows that, if they buy that house, no matter how much it costs, they can write off their losses as a tax break, and screw the young person who gets outbid because they don't have that government largesse in the form of tax breaks subsidising them. That is the crazy situation we have at the moment. We have that situation because we no longer treat affordable housing as a human right. We treat it as an investment class where the government rewards their big donors but young people get locked out of the housing market.

That's for buying, but it's increasingly the same for renting as well. If you are a young person on youth allowance trying to rent at the moment, or if you're in one of those jobs—we have a jobs crisis in this country because nearly 1 in 3 young people is either unemployed or doesn't have enough hours of work. They're stuck in low-hour, insecure work. It is hard now even to rent a house and, if the only income that you've got is Newstart or youth allowance, almost zero properties are available for you in CBD areas in some of our major capital cities.

Housing in Australia is cooked. It is seriously messed up. We have lost sight of the basic fact that housing needs to be treated as a human right. If we turned 82,000 people in the state of Victoria away from public schools because there weren't enough places at the schools, there would be an outcry. But we're turning away from public housing 82,000 people who need it—by definition these are the people who need it—because there have not been enough new public housing units built.

We need to have a construction-led recovery in the economy that also tackles the housing, homelessness and affordability crisis. And that is why the Greens have been pushing, as part of the Green New Deal, for a massive new public and affordable housing build to address the homelessness crisis; to start creating jobs in the construction sector, including for our apprentices; and to start stimulating the economy. This is what the Green New Deal is about. It's about saying we can solve the housing crisis that we've got, we can start solving the inequality and the jobs crises that we've got and we can start to stimulate the economy while tackling homelessness. We can do all of those things if government is prepared to put its hands back on the steering wheel. At the moment, leaving everything to the market, with government inflating the prices and government giving subsidies to people who don't need it, because they've already got three, four or five houses, is fuelling inequality in this country. It means we in this country don't spend our money on productive investments. It means a lot of the money from banks goes off to subsidise housing and big mortgages so that banks keep getting fat off it, because they get to write huge mortgages. The price of housing keeps going up and up, and everyone who has already got three or four houses already loves that, because then they can sell a house and make a bit of money. But everyone else gets locked out and screwed over, and that is what we need to fix with the Green New Deal.

One of the things that perplexes most people in this country is why you can't use your Medicare card to go to the dentist. Why is it that, if you get a soccer ball to the face on the weekend and it busts your jaw, you can use your Medicare card to get it fixed, but, if it busts your teeth, you can't? That is the ridiculous situation that we're in at the moment. We need to get dental into Medicare. Too many people are putting off going to the dentist because they can't afford it. That's not only bad for their teeth; it's also bad for their health in the longer term because, if you don't get your teeth fixed, it can lead to other kinds of diseases simply because the diseases get in through the mouth. That's not only bad because people end up being less healthy and have bad teeth; if the only thing you cared about was the economics of it, it's bad for the federal budget as well because those people end up having to go see the doctor or having to go to hospital because of something that was ultimately preventable.

It's also a social justice issue, because if you have bad teeth it can affect your ability to get a job. Think about someone who fronts up to an interview who's got bad teeth—it can affect your ability to get a job, and it can affect your self-esteem. We need to get dental into Medicare. This is unfinished business for the Greens. In the power-sharing parliament, back in 2010, the Greens worked with Labor and the Independents, and we got dental into Medicare for 3.4 million kids. As a result parents are able to use their Medicare card to get dental treatment for their kids. Now what we've got to do is extend that to the rest of society.

We pride ourselves in this country on having a universal healthcare system. In America they're tearing themselves apart at the moment trying to get somewhere close to what Australia's got. One of the good things about this country is that if you get sick they don't check your credit card. They check that you've got a Medicare card. You can get the help and the health care that you deserve. We need to have the same principle apply to dental care as well. Going to the dentist is far too expensive. People aren't doing it when they should, just because they can't afford it. If we want to make Australia more equal, we could start by extending our principle of Medicare and health care for all to include dental care. That's something that the Greens will be fighting for as part of the Green New Deal.

Child care should be treated as an essential service. I talk regularly to people—they're mostly women, because the burden of organising child care and caring for kids predominantly, not solely, but predominantly falls on women—who are going through the decision about whether to get back into the paid workforce. The decision that they make after a certain point is, 'I could work an extra day a week, but all of that money's going to be eaten up by childcare fees.' We have seen childcare fees go up and up and up in this country. Every parent who has to deal with childcare bills knows what I'm talking about. It's going up so much that for many women—men as well, but it's mostly women—it's now affecting their ability to make real choices about their life, like whether to go to work or stay home. They're saying, 'I could go to work, but everything I earn from that day I'm going to lose in childcare fees.' We've got an affordability crisis. We've also got an availability crisis in many places, where in some instances families are shuttling kids between two different childcare centres. You can get a day a week at one centre but not the other day that you might want to suit your employer, so you have to drop them off at another centre. Add to that the burden that many parents are facing now that they have to do the double-caring job of looking after kids but also looking after their own parents and potentially considering questions about aged care for them. There are people—it's predominantly women—who are stuck in the middle, juggling caring responsibilities above and below and juggling work as well, finding that not only are there all those pressures—which include a lot of pressures to feel like you're doing the right thing that can push many people to the point where they feel really stretched—but the financial pressure of the cost of child care is impinging on their ability to make real decisions about their lives. It is a gender equality issue.

We have had some real advances in this country. I pay tribute to the opposition for what they did when they were in government by lifting the standards of early childhood educators. We now have a situation where our kids are getting great-quality education in those preschool years. But what we haven't got right is the question of government stepping up to fund it. We need to start thinking about child care as an essential service. My goal as part of the Green New Deal is to see free universal child care available to every family who wants it. We can get there. It becomes a question of priorities. It's about how much we value women's ability to have control over their lives and how much we value the preschool education of our children. We've made some steps, but it's been at the cost of affordability and accessibility. We need to fix that. As part of a Green New Deal, we put forward universal services and universal access to child care for everyone in this country who wants it. Free child care, in the way that we start to think about other services being free and universally available—that is where we need to get to. That's what we will fight for as part of a Green New Deal.

(Quorum formed)

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