Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

A federal budget is a chance for us to see what the government wants to prioritise, what it sees as the future of the country and what it thinks we can do without. This one sums up pretty well this Labor government and, honestly, politics in Australia more broadly. It's a story of tinkering around the edges. It's a story of talking a big game. It's a story of not doing anything to challenge the megawealthy and powerful in this country while desperately trying to get everyone else to believe that our current economic system is working well for them.

Let's break a few things down. We've got a $300 power rebate—nice!—but it's not going to actually solve the long-term issues of price hikes due to mass privatisation and price gouging. We need publicly owned renewable energy where power can be sold cheaply to consumers if we are to have any hope of getting power bills under control. After immense pressure from the community and from the Greens, we have a change to how student loans are indexed. It's still going to leave people with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt when what we need to do is follow the lead of countless other countries around the world by wiping all student debt and making uni free once again. There's over $350 billion for AUKUS while we get massive cuts to the NDIS. There's just shy of $15 billion a year in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The 10 Year National Action Plan for LGBTIQA+ Health and Wellbeing has precisely zero dollars allocated to it. There's a $1.30-per-day increase for someone on rent assistance, when average rents have gone up $46 a week and when we should be seeing caps on rent increases and massive winding back of negative gearing.

This budget is bandaid solutions—tinkering around the edges—and it refuses to address the systemic causes of the massive social and economic issues we are all facing in this country. What we need is bold, progressive reform. That looks like having no new coal and gas, fully funding our state schools, getting dental and mental health into Medicare, having publicly owned renewable energy, taxing billionaires and big corporations properly, creating a public developer to build thousands of new homes and funding frontline services, just to name a few. These changes would not only drastically help people with the cost of living but also improve people's mental health and our environment at the same time.

We are at a unique point in our country's history. People's faith in government is falling, poverty is still so high, and young people are losing any hope for a positive future. People from across Australia, particularly young people, are looking for a fresh start. They want a new social contract, a new deal. It is our responsibility to offer them one. We have a chance with every budget to right the wrongs of inequality, of poverty and of environmental degradation, and it's about time we actually do it.

See this speech in context