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

It's easy to feel hopeless about the state of politics at the moment, like positive change is impossible. In fact, while you're struggling to pay the bills, the rent, the mortgage—choosing between feeding your kids and paying those housing costs—I understand that it's easy to give up hope that any sort of positive change is at all possible.

Do you want to know what the biggest asset of the Labor and Liberal parties and their corporate donors is? Their biggest asset, the thing they rely on the most, is low expectations. They want you to feel like asking for rent caps is unreasonable and impossible, even though it works around the world. They want to berate you for suggesting that we should build enough public housing for everyone who needs it to live in. They'll tell you it's impossible, even though in cities like Vienna 60 per cent of people live in some form of social housing. They want to tell you that free university education and scrapping student debt are impossible, even though countries like Norway provide free university to everyone in that country by taxing their resource corporations properly. They want you to feel like, every time you ask them for more than scraps, you're the radical, but really the radicals are the ones that suggest that, while the big banks are making record profits, it's okay for single parents to be sleeping in their cars. They're the radicals. The radicals are the ones that think it's okay for Coles and Woolworths to make billions of dollars in profits while people have to choose between paying for food that night or getting nappy rash cream for their babies.

The reality is all of those things are possible. Rent caps are possible. Building enough public housing is possible. Free university and TAFE education is possible. Bringing dental and mental health into Medicare is possible. All of these things have been done around the world. They are economically and technically possible. The barrier to achieving any of these things is political. The reality is that the majority of the country supports rent caps. The majority of the country supports scrapping tax handouts for property investors and investing that money in building public housing. The majority of this country supports establishing a government owned developer and building enough good-quality housing sold and rented at prices people can actually afford, like countries do around the world. The barrier is political. The barrier is that they are relying on you giving up hope on the idea that politics can change anything meaningful in our lives. It's reasonable to feel like that right now because indeed they do change very little and it feels like every year things get worse.

In the 2022 election we were told it was impossible to win the federal electorate of Griffith, and we did. We were told it was impossible to win Ryan or Brisbane, and we did. We won because people like you at home got organised, knocked on people's doors, reach out to people and said: 'You can hope for more. You can hope for dental and mental health into Medicare. You can hope for rent caps. You can hope for a country where we tax the wealth of big corporations and billionaires and we use it to ensure everyone in this country has what they need to live a good life.' Indeed, it has been done before and around the world, but the reality is that the only way we're going to do it is if we organise. Labor and the Liberals are terrified of the concept that there will be enough people in this country that can hope for more than scraps, that can hope for more than a country where the Commonwealth Bank can make $9 billion in profit in the same year hat we're in one of the worst housing crises this country has seen, that can hope for more than a country where right now people are struggling to make ends meet while Coles and Woolworths make billions of dollars in profit. We can hope for more than that, but the only way we're going to win it is if we get organised and push back on the corporate power of Labor and the Liberals, who spend so much time trying to crush your hope.