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

Billionaires have too much power over politics, and it's clear they would love nothing more than to export the same destructive US style politics and Trumpism into Australia. It was on full display at Trump's inauguration: front row seats for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. They're the richest people in the world. If any of these guys lost 99 per cent of their wealth overnight they'd still wake up billionaires tomorrow. Even if you saved $1,000 a day and you started from the earliest record of first humans—that was 315,000 years ago—you still wouldn't have as much money as any of them right now. If that sounds incomprehensible it's because it's exactly that: incomprehensible.

There are 159 billionaires in Australia—the most there's ever been. According to Oxfam, a single average one is earning $67,000 every single hour. Just one is earning $67,000. That's the median salary, meaning that every hour these billionaires are earning what half of the workers across the country earn over an entire year. Many of these workers can barely afford their rent, mortgage, groceries or even to go to the dentist. Is this the sort of country we want to live in—one where billionaires like Clive Palmer can take home 1,300 times the typical wage while over three million people live in poverty? If your answer is 'of course not' then the next question is: how could this happen? You've just got to follow the money.

Billionaires donated over $2 million to the major parties last financial year alone. That's a pretty good deal for access and influence. In fact, the opposition leader flew across the country to party with Australia's richest billionaire, Gina Rinehart, who's donated millions to the Liberal Party through the Cormack Foundation. The Liberals' track record shows exactly who they're working for: cutting penalty rates, attacking workers rights and slashing funding for public services like hospitals and public schools all while dishing out tax breaks to big corporations and their billionaire mates. There's no-one they won't scapegoat to do it—refugees, migrants, First Nations people, the queer community, people on income support. This is the opposition leader's playbook: stoke fear and division while his billionaire mates get richer. But we will not let him win.

If you're worried about the future, the antidote is fighting for a bold, positive plan to tackle the cost-of-living and housing crises, and the Greens have one. Right now, one in three big corporations pays no tax, but, if we make those corporations and billionaires pay their fair share, we can fund the services everyone needs, like getting dental and mental health into Medicare, ensuring you can see a GP for free, wiping all student debt, 50c public transport fares, making price gouging illegal by the big supermarkets, stopping the tax handouts to wealthy property investors and capping rent increases, all while powering the country with renewables, not new coal and gas.

This election we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The last time the Greens were in minority government we got dental for kids into Medicare and world-leading climate legislation. This time we can stop Dutton and push Labor to act.

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