Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The bill before us is about social security and young people, and my motion for a suspension of standing orders relates to the budget and the fact that the budget is screwing young Australians. This is a very important issue for a large proportion of our country and for future generations of our country, who rely on us to do our job in here today and make sure they get fair outcomes.

I know I also speak on behalf of all my party when I say that I got into politics to see change. I got into politics to come into this place to see reform, to shake the cage and to make sure that we get the big issues of our day—issues that are important to young Australians and issues that are important to all Australians—dealt with here in the Senate. There is no more important a time than budget day for a government to show its colours and how it is going to tackle the big issues of the day, because budget day is about the management of the economy and the money that we spend and about the decisions that we make on how that money is spent.

The budget yesterday treated problems like housing affordability as a political problem. The solutions that the Treasurer put forward yesterday were political solutions to an incredibly important issue for young Australians. Young Australians do not have the dream that we and previous generations in this country had of affordable housing. It is the single biggest issue. The single biggest issue leading into this budget two days ago, which has been building momentum over years of inaction from various governments, was around housing affordability in this country. That is not to mention the information that we had given to the media in weeks prior to this budget about cuts to higher education spending and more onerous conditions being put on university students to retire their debts earlier than before. If we want to incentivise young Australians to go on to tertiary education, why are we making it harder for them to get university degrees?

In my home state of Tasmania, we have this perverse situation where we have government funding to enhance the university and to turn the town I live in into a university town, yet we are actually making it harder for students to go to university and we are making it more onerous to retire their debts. We are asking these students, these young Australians, to seek higher education, to innovate and to deliver for the future of this country, but we are putting in place political roadblocks to housing affordability, which the government refuses to tackle. I counted 14 different initiatives in the budget speech last night relating to housing affordability, but none of them will tackle the structural issues that we know need to be changed, such as the perverse incentives like negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions, the need to remove stamp duty and move to a broad-based land tax. These are the things that will actually tackle these problems. The Greens do not treat this as just a political problem; we treat this as a real problem for young Australians and low-income Australians right around this country. Those are the kinds of reforms we want to see.

We are pleased that at least in this budget the government has not just tried to raise revenue from the most vulnerable, which it has always targeted in its previous budgets. In saying that, we are still disgusted by some of the measures the government has in place to go after the most vulnerable, but at least it has made an effort to go after the big end of town. The Greens campaigned at the last three federal elections for a bank levy, and good on you for adopting our policy on a bank levy. In saying that, our levy would have raised twice as much. We also applaud you on adopting our policy on bank portability and on putting in place a new financial complaints body to replace the ombudsman. That is straight out of the Greens policy book. Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction. But why kick the can down the road on other important issues, like delaying the petroleum resource rent tax? Let us get on with some real reform in this country. Today is a day to debate this, especially for young Australians who worry about their future. We are here to make sure it is secure.