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

Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, over 3.3 million people in this country are living in poverty. In a wealthy country like ours, no-one should be living in poverty and everyone should have an affordable roof over their head. Instead we are gripped by an inequality crisis that is driving the cost-of-living crisis in this country and that is seeing corporations make record profits while people have to sleep in tents because of Labor's rental crisis, where they're backing unlimited rent rises.

Now, none of that is addressed in this bill, the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee Bill 2023. I'll come back to talk about the bill in a moment. But one thing is crystal clear about economic inclusion that the government just refuses to accept: there's a crisis in this country. Everything is going up except wages. No-one has any confidence that the politicians will do anything to look after people. Labor and Liberal aren't just complicit; they're responsible. They're in charge. They have caused this. Thanks to their housing policies, more people are now living in tents. Thanks to their lack of regulation of the big supermarkets, people are going hungry. Thanks to their failure to stop price gouging in the energy markets, people can't afford to keep the lights on. People can't afford to fill up their car with fuel. We're being smashed with higher prices while Labor and Liberal take millions in corporate donations each year.

Everyone knows why we have a cost-of-living crisis: big corporations making massive profits. They have too much power and they get to write the rules. The politicians from Labor and the Liberals can't even name the cause of the crisis. In the last quarter, the Commonwealth bank made $2.5 billion. That must be nice. In the last year, NAB, the bank, made $7.7 billion, and ANZ made $7.4 billion. That must be very nice. They made this off the back of higher interest rates and higher rents, and they're backed by politicians from Liberal and Labor. Shell made $4 billion off higher fuel prices. Qantas made $2.4 billion after the government gave them millions of dollars of your money.

In the middle of an energy crisis, Origin made $1.1 billion. Every single one of these corporations donated to the Liberal and Labor parties. All of them have regular meetings with the politicians.

It is time to put people first, not the corporations. The big corporations are doing just fine. It is time to end the special treatment, cap prices and make these corporations pay their fair share of profits. All of that is what will drive economic inclusion in this country. If we want to have a fairer society, in a time when corporations are making massive profits and everyone else is doing it tough, and the government has to form a committee to go and get advice to say, 'Can you tell us what the problem is?'—well, people know what is going on: big corporations are robbing everyone blind. You can see it in your power bills. You can see it when you go to the supermarkets. What they expect politicians to do is rein in the big corporations, make them pay their fair share of tax, stop them gouging prices and use that money to make people's lives better and do things like get dental into Medicare.

The Reserve Bank governor had the gall to say that it is everyday people getting haircuts and going to the dentist that's driving inflation. Well, here's a tip: if going to the dentist is too expensive, why don't we make the big corporations pay more tax and use that money to get dental into Medicare and give everyone a bit of everyday relief? But, no, Labor won't do that. They'll set up a committee, ask for advice and then just completely ignore it like they did last time. The committee came back to them and said: 'There's a lot of people in this country doing it tough, and we need to lift people out of poverty. And you know what? We could afford it. Make the big corporations pay their fair share of tax, and you could afford it.' Did Labor listen to that? No. Labor left people in poverty. Meanwhile, the corporations make record profit after record profit, and the price of everything goes up and up and up.

We know that the housing crisis has never been worse. We have rents going up several times faster than wages. What did Labor do? They came together and got all the premiers and the Prime Minister together, and they said that Labor's position is to back unlimited rent rises. So Labor just signed off on saying that a landlord can put up the rent as much as they like, even if it means you can't afford it, and they're not going to do anything about it. That's Labor's position. Then they set up a committee and said, 'Can you advise us on what the problem is?' We know what the problem is: rents are out of control, supermarket prices are out of control, electricity bills are out of control and the corporations are making record profits.

Stop the profiteering. Stop the price gouging. Use your power as a government to freeze rents, freeze mortgage rates and stop everyday people being asked to suffer and be cannon fodder in the war on inflation. There's a different way to tackle the war on inflation, and that is to make the big corporations pay their fair share of tax, stop them price gouging and use that money to fund services like getting dental into Medicare or wiping student debt or making public school genuinely free. That's how you deliver cost of living and tackle inflation. But, no, Labor is leaving all the heavy lifting up to the RBA. As a result, the RBA say, 'Oh, the problem is that you're going to get a haircut and you're going to the dentist,' and they put up rates even more.

It is pushing people to the brink. People have had enough. People can't afford more mortgage rises and more rent rises and higher costs at the supermarket, but Labor says that that's fine. It is no wonder that at the last election Labor's vote went backwards. It's no wonder we have a situation where less than a third of the country votes for the government, a bit more than a third of the country votes for the opposition and a third is now voting for someone else, because it is only people like the Greens in parliament who are going to take on the big corporations that are driving this cost-of-living crisis, make them pay their fair share of tax, stop the price gouging, freeze mortgage rates, freeze rents and tackle the cost-of-living crisis and the inflation crisis that way. It's no wonder there is a growing disconnect and that people are getting turned off politics. They voted for a change of government in the hope that the government would do something to tackle the situation people found themselves in, but they look at the politicians in power just saying, 'Yes, keep hiking the rents, keep hiking the mortgage rates, put up supermarket prices as much as you want,' and doing absolutely nothing about it.

It is no wonder that people are getting disconnected, because they see that, if you give them power, the politicians don't do anything about it; they just keep taking donations from them all.

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