Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Donald Trump, Brexit and, here at home, One Nation—the common thread running through all of these political tremors is a discontent, a frustration and a disappointment that people are being left behind in droves and that they are not enjoying the spoils of economic growth. Wages are flat. There is casualisation of the workforce. There is a lack of infrastructure, whether it be public transport infrastructure or energy infrastructure. All of that is happening at the same time that luxury car sales are going through the roof and waterfront house prices are smoking hot. The obvious response to this is to say: 'It's not working. This isn't working for ordinary people. It's time to recast the old economic consensus where you let the market rip, let dog eat dog and turbocharge casino capitalism and crony capitalism. There's something going wrong there.' That would be the response from a rational person. Yet what is this government proposing to do? This government decides that it is going to play the race card. It wheels out Peter Dutton and starts blaming: 'It's all the Muslims' fault. It's those Lebanese Muslims you’ve got to worry about', instead of looking in its own backyard and instead of giving the tax cuts a rest. It has nothing to do with jobs and growth; they are basically a way of concentrating wealth in the hands of a privileged few. Let's ditch those tax cuts. Let's walk away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a trade deal that says to an ordinary punter: 'We don't care about you. We care about the profits of a big multinational. In fact, we care about them so much we're going to give them the power to sue sovereign governments if a government does anything to protect the environment or public health.'

Walk away from the trade deal for goodness sake. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not in the interests of ordinary people. That would be one of the big lessons to be learnt from what is happening right across the world, but Australian wages are going nowhere and the Reserve Bank said they are going to be flat for the foreseeable future. We know it is happening right around the world.

We have jobs data that shows that employers are casualising workplaces. And they like doing that; they prefer having more flexibility within their workplaces. Of course, the problem with casualisation for ordinary workers is that they feel less secure and find it hard to plan for the future. They are vulnerable; they go to the bank and they cannot get a mortgage because they have no certainty. Add soaring property prices on top of that and you have a series of things that are festering within the community. It leads to resentment, it leads to a feeling of betrayal and it leads to a sense of the political establishment failing the community.

Of course, you get a potent cocktail when you find somebody who is able to channel that resentment towards somebody else—to make it somebody else's fault, whether it be Muslims, whether it be Mexicans or whether it be women. When you combine those issues of race and misogyny with the underlying problem of growing inequality then you have a very potent political cocktail. That is what is going on here, and we have a choice about whether we respond and listen to the concerns of ordinary people and do something about the growing inequality in Australian society or whether we go down the low road.

Let me talk about going down the low road: we saw the Labor Party put forward a policy called 'Australia first'. It was not Australia first—it was One Nation first! How about we put some humanity first? We can look after the sovereignty of this country and we can look after ordinary working people without blowing the dog whistle or, in some cases, the foghorn. We have had barely a year where the Labor Party sided with the Liberals to defeat Greens legislation that would have required local advertising of jobs under the China free trade deal and that would have required particular standards to be met within some employment classes. Barely a year after the Labor Party sided with the coalition now they come forward with their Australia first policy.

That is not the answer: retreating into nationalism and preying on other people is not the answer. If you are serious about inequality you do not cut taxes for the wealthiest Australians. You do not remove supports from those people who need them most. In this chamber we have a responsibility: we have to listen; we have to recognise that race is a potent political weapon and that we have to take a stand against it whenever we see it; and we have to make sure that the prosperity of a strong Australian nation is shared equally amongst all Australians and between generations.