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

How can this Labor government know that there are millions of renters and mortgage holders choosing between feeding their kids or making their rent or mortgage payment, and the best they can do is offer them scraps? Meanwhile, they're giving property investors $175 billion. How is it that the best Labor can do for renters is give nothing to four million of them, and then, for the precious few that do get Commonwealth rent assistance, all they get is $9 extra a week when rents are sometimes going up by hundreds of dollars a week?

This budget also gives every politician in this place $4½ thousand off on their tax. That is $87 dollars a week for every politician in this place and just $9 a week for some of the poorest renters. Surely Labor knows people are hurting. Surely they know that there are millions giving up on ever being able to buy a home. Surely they know that there are millions choosing between making that rent payment and feeding their kids. How can Labor know all of this and then turn around and give billions of dollars to billionaires and big corporations and, to top it all off, bank a $9.3 billion surplus that could build over 18,000 public homes? I'll tell you what will help people: stop giving money to billionaires and use it to bring dental into Medicare, build public housing and scrap student debt—the sort of things that will help people in this country.

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