Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor's betrayal budget is your cost-of-living pain. Labor is boasting about a surplus while people skip meals to pay the rent. So much for no-one being left behind! Labor's budget betrays renters, mortgage holders, students, disabled people and everyone doing it tough.

Labor could have put in place a freeze and cap on rents; instead, they're leaving renters to rot in housing hell, offering only a quarter of renters up to an extra $1.30 a day, while average rents are set to go up by $46 a week. Three-quarters of renters get nothing but unlimited rent rises and a fraction of renters get only an extra dollar a day in rent assistance, while this budget gives the country's wealthy and property investors $1,290 every second. Labor could have ended tax handouts for wealthy property investors that are stopping renters from buying their first home; instead, there's $174½ billion in tax handouts for the wealthy and property investors. Labor could have made billionaires and big corporations pay more to fund dental into Medicare, make child care free and cancel all student debt, but to do so Labor would have had to have the guts to take on big corporations, and they simply don't. Instead, Labor decided to give every politician in this place and every billionaire a $4½ thousand dollar a year tax cut, while everyday people struggle.

It is getting harder and harder to tell Liberal and Labor apart. People have every right to be angry about a budget that finds $764 billion for Defence but can't find a cent to raise the rate of JobSeeker or youth allowance. There's new money for tax cuts for politicians this year, but there's no new money for frontline services for women fleeing family and domestic violence. There's no new money for protecting the environment, and Labor is spending almost $50 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. There's money for the bad guys and bandaid answers for you. The Greens will move to amend the budget to stop the direct handouts to coal and gas and oil, handouts like the billions of dollars that Labor is a spending on the Middle Arm precinct in the Northern Territory—a big new gas factory that Labor is hell-bent on backing.

What does this Labor government expect people to do—genuinely, what is it? What is a renter who's been slugged with another out-of-control rent increase supposed to do when Labor won't freeze rates? What is a student with a completely unaffordable HECS debt supposed to do when Labor won't wipe it or make uni free, like it was for the Prime Minister? What is a single mum, trying to escape a violent partner, supposed to do when Labor won't fund the critical frontline services for people experiencing violence?

The crises that we're in—inequality, housing, climate—are caused and fuelled by Liberal and Labor, by their actions in government and their refusal to take on the billionaires and the big corporations. They're throwing people to the wolves to face the consequences, and when people ask for help what do they get? They get spin or scraps or nothing. No wonder people are fed up with politics. It's the government's responsibility to deliver a budget that makes our lives better. That's what we vote them in to do. Right now Labor could be making the choices to improve our lives, and once again they're choosing not to.

We could have frozen rents, stopped the handouts for property investors and used those billions to build public housing, which everyone wants to live in. We could have taxed the big coal and gas corporations and used that money to deliver free child care while fully funding dental and mental health care as part of Medicare. Instead of handing billions of dollars to Defence corporations for nuclear submarines, while millions of people around this world are marching for peace, we could have lifted those on JobSeeker and youth allowance out of poverty. And that's not even mentioning the $4½ thousand a year tax cut that Labor handed politicians and billionaires, while everyday people skip meals just to pay rent. The housing, rental and cost-of-living crises are breaking people. We can't afford more of Labor's bandaid answers that make the problems worse. It's time to take on the big banks, the big corporations and the billionaires; to stop the price-gouging; and to make unlimited rent rises illegal.