Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you're feeling like Labor and the Liberal and National parties aren't listening to you and your needs, you'd be right. Recent data on the amount of corporate money that Labor and the Liberal and National parties take in so-called donations shows why. Let me give a few examples.

Labor and the Liberal and National parties last year took $4 million in donations from the property industry. Just the other week, the Queensland Labor government announced $350 million in handouts for property developers. Meanwhile, you're struggling to pay the rent. The banking and finance sector? They donated $11 million to Labor and the Liberal and National parties last year. In return, the banks have been allowed to rake in over $33 billion in profit, with practically no government scrutiny. Meanwhile, you're struggling to pay your mortgage. Coal, oil and gas corporations last year donated $2 million to Labor and the Liberal and National parties and got over $10 billion of public money in return. Meanwhile, we get heatwaves, floods and cyclones from the growing climate crisis.

We don't have dental in Medicare. I wonder why. Is it because it would hurt the business model of private health insurers like Bupa, who, incidentally, donate tens of thousands of dollars every year to Labor and the Liberal and National parties? While families struggle to make ends meet and young people face an uncertain future of insecure jobs and unaffordable housing, the old parties are cosying up to wealthy donors.

It's $10 for a block of Coles brand cheese, $4.50 for a carton of milk and more than $10 for a kilo of mince. That's almost $25 just there for the absolute essentials, and you can't even make a family meal out of that. Ten years ago you could feed a family for less than $10, and now it costs double that to make a meal for one. Meanwhile, Coles and Woolies have made record billion-dollar profits and farmers are getting absolutely screwed. Something just doesn't add up. That's price gouging. The former Woolies CEO, Brad Banducci, resigned in disgrace after being questioned about the company's rampant profiteering. The new CEO is on a tidy $2-plus million a year. The Coles CEO is on more than $3 million. Meanwhile, 3.9 million households are stressed about grocery prices. I somehow don't think the Woolies CEO is feeling that stress.

The Labor government has been talking a big game about looking into supermarket price gouging, but there's been no action. The Greens have proposed to give the competition watchdog powers to smash the duopoly of Coles and Woolies, increase competition and lower prices. It's time Labor and the Liberal and National parties got on board.

The same goes for the airlines, who get a free pass to do pretty much what they want. That's why the Greens have secured a Senate inquiry into aircraft noise, and submissions are now open. Many thousands of Brisbane people have been affected by a huge increase in unbearable flight noise since the opening of the new runway at Brisbane Airport a few years back. Even though there are clear solutions to this, the community has been fobbed off and dismissed by the aviation industry and government regulators. Now we have a moment to put them all on the spot, to turn up the heat and to start getting real solutions. Submissions can be as short or as long as you like. You can find a detailed submissions guide on my website, along with all of the instructions about how to submit. This is your chance to share your story and shine a light on how big airlines and airport corporations have taken control of our government and regulators, putting profits in the way of a good night's sleep for so many across the country.

Speaking of corporate capture, many Ryan residents have raised concerns about the lack of mobile coverage in the area. It is utterly unacceptable that in 2024 we are still grappling with the fallout of botched mobile coverage and NBN upgrades. In lovely areas like Moggill, Bellbowrie, Brookfield and The Gap, near the bustling heart of Brisbane, many are stranded in a digital desert, unable to make a simple phone call or easily access the internet. Clearly, the current system is just not working for people because of the stranglehold that privatised Telstra holds over our telecommunications infrastructure, coupled with the for-profit and underfunded NBN's delays in high-speed broadband rollout across the country. The privatisation and the corporatisation of our essential services and infrastructure means Australia continues to place last in the OECD rankings for entry-level fixed broadband availability while other countries surge ahead with cutting-edge technologies.

There is hope. Through persistent advocacy from my wonderful team, working with locals, we have had some wins. Kenmore Hills, Bellbowrie and The Gap were eventually included in the NBN upgrade rollout, with Kenmore Hills prioritised and full fibre-to-the-premises installations currently ongoing. This was despite these residents initially being told they would have to foot the bill themselves. What a disgrace—huge out-of-pocket costs for essential infrastructure that should have been provided by the government. Now we'll fight the same uphill battle with residents of The Gap and Fig Tree Pocket too.

These are urban areas. It shouldn't be this hard to get a decent internet connection or mobile coverage. It's an absolute disgrace, but perhaps most infuriating of all is the knowledge that this crisis was entirely avoidable. The short-sighted decision to privatise Telstra in the nineties effectively sold off our future, consigning us to a fate where corporate greed reigns supreme. Telstra, Optus and NBN Co—they're all cut from the same cloth: prioritising profits over people, leaving us at their mercy. We need to put our key infrastructure back in the hands of the public so that it works for the people and not for profit.

Imagine thinking that big, profit-hungry developers to whom we hand $350 million are actually going to help fix the housing crisis! That's what Queensland Labor has just announced. It's not clear whether Labor genuinely believe this will work or whether they know it won't but are quite happy to continually do the bidding of the big developers, who are using the housing crisis as an excuse to extract more concessions out of our governments. Here's the thing that Labor and the property industry don't want you to know: big for-profit developers do not want property prices to go down, because that will reduce their profits. This extra money will just line their pockets while they land-bank many suitable sites and hold back the supply of housing.

For as long as federal Labor isn't willing to touch negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, we've got a system that locks in skyrocketing house prices. The Greens have this radical notion of a public property developer—what a crazy idea! This would mean that the government could actually build homes, like it used to, to rent or sell to everyday people at below the market rate. Since it would be publicly owned, it would ensure that new homes are high-quality, sustainable and in good locations. Over 10 years, it could build over 600,000 homes, and, by providing genuine competition to the for-profit property industry, it would stabilise house prices, giving young people a go at actually owning one.