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

A message to Labor: you don't beat the far right and their billionaire and corporate mates by adopting their policies, taking their money in political donations and offering more of the same. We have seen it in the US. Trump blamed immigrants for the cost of living and the housing crisis, and what did the Democrats do? They acted tough on migrants, took donations from billionaires and basically proposed the status quo with a bit of tinkering around the edges. Well, we saw the result of that. Somehow they allowed Trump, a billionaire property mogul backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, to become the anti-establishment change candidate.

Now Peter Dutton is blaming migrants for the cost-of-living crisis. What are Labor doing? They're passing some of the most draconian antimigrant laws this country has seen. That's what Labor are doing in response. They are breaking their own policy platform to adopt Dutton's policy proposal for mandatory minimum sentencing, and they're dumping their own environmental policy to please a bunch of massive mining corporations—oh, and taking donations from billionaires like Anthony Pratt, himself a supporter of Trump—and proposing basically the status quo with a bit of tinkering around the edges. Now Labor are somehow allowing Peter Dutton—the guy who rides in billionaire Gina Rinehart's private jet to special parties and thinks mining corporations should pay less tax than they already do—to become the anti-establishment change candidate, just like Trump.

Time and again we have seen far-right thugs like Trump and Dutton rise to power in times of economic crisis only after political parties like Labor utterly fail to offer any genuine alternative vision, one that directly addresses the cost-of-living and housing concerns of working people and offers an alternative narrative to the one offered by the far right. People are losing hope because the main opposition party is proposing radical right-wing change and the other party is promising basically more of the same. When more of the same is skipping meals to pay the rent, I can understand why people are angry.

But here's the real problem, and, if the Labor Party had guts, this is what they would say. One-third of Australia's biggest corporations pay zero dollars in tax. Meanwhile, two-thirds of all retirees who rent are living in poverty, skipping meals, sitting in the dark to save on their power bills and dreading their next rent increase.

The real problem is not migrants. It's the fact that Australia's 159 billionaires more than doubled their wealth over the last few years to over half a trillion dollars, or $584 billion, while one in three single parents and their families live below the poverty line. That is over 300,000 kids with single parents in this country living below the poverty line.

The real problem is that, over a seven-year period, five of the largest multinational gas corporations operating in Australia made $134 billion in revenue and, you guessed it, paid zero dollars in tax. Meanwhile, millions of Australians are struggling to pay their rent or mortgage.

The real problem is billionaires and big corporations wielding enormous power over our political system, and they use that power to make the vast majority of our lives tougher while using their ownership of giant media companies to blame migrants.

The silver lining in this context is that Australia has a very different political system to that of the United States. We aren't forced to choose between a far-right radical like Trump and more of the same in the Democrats. In Australia you can choose something else. Our preferential voting system means you can vote for the Greens and then preference whoever you like after that, and then you can make sure that you keep Dutton out but actually push for a hopeful vision—

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Griffith, please remember to refer to members either by their title or by their electorate.

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

And then we can push for a hopeful vision for this country, one that says we can tax billionaires and big corporations, make them pay their fair share in tax and use that to do things like bring dental and mental health for everyone into Medicare so no-one has to skip a meal just so they can fund their kid's trip or their trip to the dentist.

We can bring back free university and TAFE so working people in this country can go to university without fear of copping tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. We can tax billionaires and big corporations to build enough public housing in this country so everyone has the home that they need to live a good life, just like people in Australia used to. We can start to bring the energy system back into public hands so we don't have private energy companies ripping us off on our power bills to make massive profits. We can follow Norway and tax our gas industry properly, take that billions of dollars in wealth that is currently going offshore and put it into our country right now to do things like raise the pension above the poverty line, raise Jobseeker and other income support payments above the poverty line, and make sure everyone in this country has a good life. That's what we're fighting for.

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I see a motion like this, particularly from the Greens political party, it really reinforces to me that it is possible in this place to have aspirations that are quite close. I look at some of the aspirations in this motion—to build more houses, particularly for those who are vulnerable, to have a fairer tax system and so on—and I say to myself, 'I don't totally disagree with some of the aspirations that this motion is pointing towards.' But it takes more than aspirations in public policy and more than aspirations in the real world to get outcomes that mean things for people—the people that we ought to be representing in this place. What I think the Greens political party fails to do is move beyond listing a whole bunch of aspirations to, first, have the depth to come up with practical, well-thought-through solutions, and, second, in the midst of a political environment, move beyond being activists or a university debating club and get lasting outcomes that lead to real-world solutions.

Let me point to an area that is a first-order issue when it comes to people's quality of life, particularly during this course of this parliament, and that is tax policy and tax relief—the stage 3 tax cuts. We can have a motion which says that we should tax more evenly, that we should tax in such a way that we give greater benefits to those who are more vulnerable, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis. What this government actually delivered was tax relief that led to tax cuts for every taxpayer but that was much more skewed towards those on low incomes than what was being presented to the parliament by the previous government. People on less than $45,000 would have received no tax cuts under the previous government's scheme, but under this government received more than $800 a year—meaningful increases in their disposable income during a time when people were feeling particularly squeezed. Eighty-four per cent of taxpayers—indeed, probably a higher proportion of that in my electorate—are better off under our tax cuts.

This government is delivering meaningful, real benefits to people. The Greens political party will put forward all sorts of aspirations when it comes to the tax system: tax billionaires a gazillion dollars. I think that was the response of one of the technocrats out there, but it is meaningless. It doesn't lead to real outcomes for people that deserve them. Another area, perhaps one that best highlights the Greens as activists rather than genuine responsible partners, in government is housing policy. When this government put forward sensible reforms—the Housing Australia Future Fund, the Help to Buy scheme, the Build to Rent scheme—the Greens party, because it wasn't exactly what they wanted, or because it didn't go as far as they thought it should go, blocked it month after month after month. We see the housing difficulties this country is facing are all the more difficult because they prefer activism over getting an outcome. They don't do the hard work on the policy, they don't come up with practical solutions that are actually achievable and, in addition, their mode of operating in the political system and in this parliament is such that they would rather see nothing occur so long as they can keep going out doorknocking and cynically use an issue for political purposes.

This government has achieved so much in housing—$32 billion of initiatives—plus free TAFE places, which have led to something in the order of 45,000 additional people being trained, which is going to do a huge amount for the supply side of this housing challenge. The Greens political party spent a year or more blocking many of these measures along with the Liberal Party. They should hang their heads in shame at the way they behaved this term.

This motion contains a number of parts that I agree are issues which require further action. But, on most of these topics, the government has delivered action, often in the face of ideological, activist and simplistic opposition from the Greens that has been entirely counterproductive. That's what we should look at when we look at the words of those opposite.

Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there anything that sums up the Greens political party more than what we're going through right now—a performative motion full of wedge politics aimed to elicit an emotional response? I was expecting them to come up here and come out fighting. They didn't even show up! What's going on? It shows that they're performative politics at best. They put up the words and they don't back it with action. They will spread this motion out to their supporters and say how they're in Canberra fighting the good fight and they're in the Federation Chamber putting up this motion. Here we are today; it's 7.26 pm. We've got hardworking members of the Albanese government here speaking on this motion and putting the record straight, and they couldn't even be bothered to show up to debate their own motion.

That just sums up the difference between us. We come here and we work. We work to solve some of these problems that the Greens identify. They just identify the problems; they don't do much about them. They just talk about it or hold up their placards, but, when it actually comes to doing what we need to do in this place to change the lives of Australians, to make our tax system fairer and to help with the cost of living, they are no-shows—absolute no-shows. I cannot wait to tell my community about this—how the Greens perform out there in front of their supporters but then can't come here and actually have the debates that we need to move our country forward.

Like the Greens, I believe that multinationals should pay their fair share in tax. But, unlike the Greens, we actually do something about it. We came to government and made it clear that multinationals should not get away with exploiting loopholes and shifting profits offshore while hardworking Australians often pay more than some of these multinationals. For too long these big corporations have dodged loopholes and used these loopholes to dodge tax, whilst everyday Australians, like nurses, teachers and tradies—and small business owners, I might add—have to pay their fair share. That's not right. What do we do? We introduce laws to set global and domestic minimum tax for multinational corporations. We ensure that companies making profits in Australia pay tax in Australia. That is a government that works. That is a government that introduces the laws that we need, not just empty motions and no-shows here in the Federation Chamber.

This legislation was a critical step in line with our OECD global tax reforms. Under our change, any multinational enterprise with global revenues exceeding $1.2 billion will now be subject to a 15 per cent minimum tax rate. That'll end the race to the bottom on corporate tax dodging. If small businesses in particular in Ryde, Epping and Eastwood are paying tax on their profits, then multinational corporations making billions in Australia should be doing the same. This is real action. If you believed the Greens political party, you would think nothing is being done. This motion is about playing politics instead of supporting progress.

When we took office, inflation had a six in front of it; it has now fallen to something with a two in front of it. Real wages are rising again. Unemployment remains at 50-year lows, and 1.1 million jobs have been created. These numbers represent real Australians with jobs, real families with more money in their pockets and a real difference in the cost-of-living pressures that people have been facing. We have been able to deliver this economic reform and deliver increased multinational taxes while also delivering cost-of-living relief.

If you read the Greens political party motion, you would think that no Australian is getting that relief, and that is simply not true. We've had tax cuts delivered to every taxpayer—all 13.6 million of them. That's every nurse, teacher and tradie keeping more of what they earn, because we know that it's working people who drive this economy. This motion talks about Medicare as if it stood still in time, but the Greens political party know that's not the case. Labor has tripled the bulk-billing incentive—the biggest boost to Medicare in 40 years—ensuring millions more GP visits are bulk-billed and reducing out-of-pocket costs for families. We promised 50 urgent care clinics, but you know what? We've delivered more than 80—80 urgent care clinics to cut emergency room wait times and deliver cost-of-living relief.

We've committed more funding to housing in three years than the Liberals did in 10. We've committed $32 billion to deliver rental homes, social homes, affordable homes and market housing, whilst also helping those renters who want to buy their first home.

We've wiped $3 billion in student debt, with more to come if we get re-elected. We're about action here on this side. When those opposite bother to show up, all they do is talk.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19 : 31