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

The new Star casino opened in Brisbane not even two weeks ago and is now asking for a government bailout, asking for billions of dollars to go out the door to prop up the gambling industry. It's a classic case of socialism for the rich but rugged individualism for everyone else. These giant corporations do not play by the same rules that the rest of us do. When they need help, governments of all persuasions go above and beyond to provide absolutely everything they need to be able to keep their failing business models going. No-one else across the economy gets that level of support.

This is an economy that has been created by both major parties over the last few decades: one rule for the multinational corporation and another rule for everyone else. It's a matter of priorities, of choices. What governments do, and often what they don't do, speaks volumes. The actions and inactions of the government help to determine what kind of society we will become. So when we hear stories from Australia and around the world about the necessity of bailing out enormous companies—banks, casinos and the like—while at the same time poverty increases and homelessness gets worse it makes sense that people are very angry. These actions make people angry because they always come at a time when everyday people are struggling. People can't afford their rents or mortgages. The cost of groceries is skyrocketing. We are told the government are doing everything they can to help people, but there's always got to be a few billion kept aside just in case a multinational company or a billionaire need a bailout or a nuclear submarine needs buying. There's just never enough for public and social services.

This is not a way to run an economy or a country unless you want both to end in ruin. Our economy should work for all of us, not just a small few at the top. Our economy should be built on the idea that everyone should have what they need to live a good life. The essentials of health care, education, food and housing cannot be left solely in the hands of the market. It is these old ideas that have gotten us into this mess. The same ideas will not get us out. We need to start thinking outside the box. We need to push for new ideas of what is even considered possible and what is possible for Australia as society that values human dignity and an economy built on that foundation and of equality of opportunity.

But what does that actually look like? It looks like bringing dental and mental health into Medicare for starters. We are all seeing and experiencing rates of bulk-billing slipping away as our healthcare system continues on its slide towards mirroring the United States. We cannot keep going down that path. The best way to protect Medicare is to expand it to cover our brains and our teeth.

This new kind of economy looks like wiping student debt and making uni free again so that everyone in this country has access to higher education. We can improve our country's productivity and began to specialise our economy so we are ready for the jobs of the future, of which almost 50 per cent will need a university degree.

It looks like fixing our broken housing system so that a house is seen as a home, not as a speculative market to invest in. It means building public housing, introducing caps on rent increases and dramatically scaling back negative gearing so that everyone can afford a house of their own.

It means 100 per cent publicly owned renewable energy and a rapid transition to a net zero economy, protecting our environment and our biodiversity at the same time as lowering our emissions and our power bill.

But most of all, to achieve any of this, a new kind of economy means taking on the billion dollar corporations, the fossil fuel companies, the politicians of the major parties and the billionaire class who are addicted to the status quo. We can make these changes. We can create a society and an economy that finally put people over profit. And that change is coming, especially as younger people who enter the workforce see just how bleak the future really is. We have to demand and create a better world. All of our futures and the future of our planet depend on us doing so.

I also want to talk about the census, not just as an MP whose electorate is home to a large number of queer people but also as a gay man myself. The last couple of weeks have been extremely rough for the LGBTIQA+ community. Counting us in the census was something that the community have been working on and campaigning for years to achieve. To find out that this was not happening after it was dropped to Sky News on a Sunday afternoon was an insult. This Labor Prime Minister truly believed that his government could walk back a promise made to the community in the lead-up to the 2022 election and reaffirmed in Labor's 2023 national platform, seemingly without any blowback. And choosing Sky News, of all places, as the outlet to give this story to said it all for me. It was yet another example of this government letting its fear of the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, call the shots.

But I was so proud to see the community unite and demand the government change its position, and the pressure worked. We first saw the government agree to ask a question on sexual orientation, and then a few days later it agreed to ask one on gender identity. But the intersex community are still left behind. The Greens will continue to urge and pressure the government to work with the intersex community and the ABS on a path forward so that we can ensure everyone in the LGBTIQA+ community is counted.

But the damage has, sadly, already been done. I've personally heard from numerous queer people in my electorate, from friends and from people across the country that their trust in the Labor Party has been shattered by this. It came at a time when so many people are already struggling—struggling with cost of living and housing stress—and then the general feeling from people was, 'You're not even going to give us this.' The protections for queer staff and students in schools were given up on, and now we couldn't even have something as simple as being counted in the census. Saying one thing in opposition and doing another thing in government is not how you win friends, and it creates an enormous sense of distrust in the community that can be impossible to recover from. We don't expect much from the coalition on LGBTIQA+ issues, but we and I expected a hell of a lot more from Labor, and the paternalistic language that we heard from the Prime Minister did not make me feel better. I found it condescending. The queer community is not weak. We do not always need to be protected. We can fight for ourselves. We've been campaigning for this census change for years. It was a fight we wanted and were willing to have. It was the job of a supposedly progressive government to have our backs in that fight. But I'm not even angry anymore—and I was very angry. I'm just disappointed.

On top of being counted in the census and protections for queer students and teachers in schools, what we need now is a LGBTIQA+ human rights commissioner—someone working in the Australian Human Rights Commission to ensure that queer rights receive the full attention that they deserve. Right now, across the world, we see the rise of the far right and the demonisation of queer people. We need an LGBTIQA+ human rights commissioner to help us hold the government of this country to account so that, even when the major parties show their true colours, there are even more voices calling them out and holding them to account. I've been calling for such a commissioner since I first arrived in this place just a bit over two years ago, and the Greens will keep fighting for one. If the Labor Party are to have any hope of rebuilding trust with the queer community in this country, they should get on board and establish this commissioner.