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

Inflation is soaring, the cost of living is rising and power bills are set to spike. Meanwhile, coal and gas corporations are making massive profits while one in four Australians are struggling to make ends meet. I was excited to join my Victorian Greens colleagues last week to call on the government to freeze electricity bills at precrisis levels for two years. This vital cost-of-living relief would be funded by making these greedy energy companies—who are making massive profits—pay. This would save an average household over $750.

In the Victorian state electorates of Melbourne and Richmond, which make up large parts of my federal electorate of Melbourne, hundreds of volunteers have been out having conversations with people in the lead-up, and we're hearing one thing clearly: people are doing it tough. We've heard from parents who are worried about how they'll afford their energy bills while putting food on the table for their kids. We've spoken to young people unable to afford a place to rent and terrified of getting kicked out of their home by asking for basic rights from their landlords. Over half the people in Melbourne and Richmond are renters. Wages are flatlining, but rents are rising at record rates. Renters need better rights. We need to freeze rents, build more affordable homes and ban political donations from big property developers. More Greens in the Victorian parliament will kick the Liberals out and hold Labor to account and push them to deliver the urgent cost-of-living relief that is needed, and to do that ahead of corporate profiteering. It is time to freeze rents and freeze power bills, so people can start to make ends meet.

To tackle inequality, we're going to have to take on some of the big vested interests in the country that seem to have this government in their pockets. Because while there was nothing in this budget about freezing rents and while there was nothing to deliver immediate relief for people dealing with soaring energy prices, what this government did find its way to include in the budget was at least $40 billion of subsidies to the very same coal and gas corporations that are driving the climate crisis and that are contributing to the energy crisis that we're seeing.

If you were to do one thing in your budget to tackle inequality, it wouldn't be to give over a quarter of a trillion dollars of public money to politicians and billionaires and the wealthiest people in this country—to give them a $9,000 a year tax cut per year, every year, forever. This budget had the potential to deliver immediate cost-of-living relief in a lasting way to people right across this country, such as by getting dental into Medicare and dealing with the fact that the average household spends about $1,000 every year going to the dentist, and some just don't go at all because they can't afford it. They could make child care free for everyone and deal with those massive costs that people are facing. We could wipe student debt. We could build affordable homes. These are the things that are on the table if you don't give a quarter of a trillion dollars of public money to Clive Palmer and billionaires and politicians for tax cuts that, frankly, they don't need. That is why this budget did not put in place free dental as part of Medicare, free child care to people or wipe student debt. It's because the government prioritised giving tax cuts to politicians and billionaires instead and handed out $40 billion in subsidies to the very corporations that are driving the climate crisis.

I heard the minister talk about their housing plan. Under their housing plan, the waiting list for social housing is going to be longer at the end than it was at the beginning. They say, 'We're going to build a million houses over the next five years.' Well about 975,000—close to a million—were built in the last five years and look at the situation we're in at the moment. We need government to step in and help to freeze rents. We need government to step in and build public housing that people who are doing it tough can move into. And it's got to be affordable housing. Contracting it all out, as the government is doing, to the property developers and just hoping that they might do something that is affordable is not an answer. People need relief from rent rises now. People need a rent freeze now. We need to do something about electricity bills now.

The Greens have a costed plan to freeze rents for two years and make the big corporations who are engaging in wartime profiteering from the energy crisis pay for it. That way, we can deal with the cost of living crisis while also making big corporations pay their fair share.

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