Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The political and economic system is stacked against everyday people. Here are a few reasons why. Labor will make more money charging interest on your HECS or student debt than they will off their new taxes on oil and gas corporations. While house prices, rents and mortgages continue to skyrocket, they are handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax concessions to property investors and landlords.

Labor continues to support Israel as it carries out a genocide in Gaza, refusing to even call for a permanent and immediate ceasefire, and pausing aid funding for Palestine.

People are being crushed under the weight of bills, whether it be groceries, rents, mortgages or healthcare costs, meanwhile corporate profits continue to soar. It is easy to lose hope in that situation, but the thing is that's exactly what the political establishment wants you to do. They want you to turn away from the horrors in Gaza and lose hope that we can help win peace together. They want you to believe it's impossible to scrap student debt and make uni free again, even though so many of the politicians in this place got uni for free themselves. They want you to believe that we can't tax the super profits of big corporations and use that money to give people the things they need to live a good life—a good affordable home, free health care and education. They want you to feel powerless and like you can't change anything yourselves, but here's the thing.

We know the power of collective organising. We know the power of everyday working people coming together and fighting for a better future, and it's time we showed the political establishment what that looks like.

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