Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It felt like the thesaurus got a bit of a workout when that speech was being drafted!

Having helped themselves to a massive personal tax cut last week, the Liberals are now trying to look after their big corporate mates and donors by giving them a whopping great tax cut this week. Let's be really clear about what's actually at stake here. Fundamentally, what are we discussing and debating when we talk about corporate tax cuts?

What is at stake here is the question of what kind of country we want to be and what kind of society we want in Australia. Do we want to be the kind of country where people look after each other? The Greens say, resoundingly, 'Yes, that is the kind of country we should be.' When we ask ourselves, 'Do we want quality public services, quality hospitals, quality schools, quality public transport and quality social security nets for those doing it tough?' the Australian Greens answer, resoundingly, 'Yes'.

When we ask ourselves, 'Do we want the big corporates, who donate so massively to both the Liberal and National parties in this place, to pay a reasonable return to our society on the huge profits they are making?' the Australian Greens resoundingly answer, 'Yes'. Or do we want what the Liberals are proposing—to cut these corporations free of the very basic obligations that many of them are actually failing to meet right now? Do we want to hand over more power to the corporate boardrooms, bought by the corporate donations that are corrupting our democracy? The Australian Greens answer, 'No'. Do we want to leave vulnerable people out in the cold, like the homeless people in my home city of Hobart, who are camping out at showgrounds now because they can't find a house—and many of these people are working full-time and they can't find a house because the Liberal government in Tasmania has not taken strong enough action and invested enough money into social and affordable housing? When we ask ourselves, 'Do we want to leave vulnerable people out in the cold?' the Australian Greens answer, 'No'. Those are the questions that are currently before this parliament.

The Liberal Party made their choice many years ago and their decisions are hurting us all and they are devastating the environment. The Liberal Party have been instrumental in taking power away from people and putting it into the hands of the corporate boardrooms and their corporate masters, who buy and sell the Liberal Party with their massive corporate donations. The big corporates buy the Liberal Party in donations and, in turn, the Liberal Party come in here and cut the taxes of the big corporations so that the top end of town can put more money into their own pockets. That's exactly what will happen if these corporate tax cuts are passed.

The people of Braddon, in my home state of Tasmania, know all about it—my word they do! There are corporations on the north-west coast that have cut jobs in Braddon and have cut the working conditions of thousands of people in the north-west of Tasmania—the very same big corporates that the Liberal Party wants to give a giant tax cut to. Meanwhile, if you're one of the people sacked by these corporations, you get nothing but disdain and contempt from the Liberal Party. Newstart hasn't been raised in more than 20 years—nearly a full generation—and the minimum wage in this country is far, far too low. Instead of acting on those things, the government tries to recover debts from people who either don't have enough money to pay them or who, in many cases, did nothing wrong and incurred no debt in the first place. It's enough to make you sick, and the people of Braddon have had enough—and the Australian Greens will stand with them.

We're the only party campaigning in Braddon to raise Newstart. We're the only party campaigning in Braddon to make sure that the minimum wage in this country is set at a minimum of 60 per cent of the median income. We'll stand with them. We'll stand for a better society in Australia—the kind of society that demands that the big corporates pay what they owe; a society that looks after the sick as well as the healthy, the old, the young, the poor, people working on the minimum wage and those people who cannot find work. To those people, particularly those people in Braddon, I say: the Australian Greens and our fantastic candidate Jarrod Edwards have got your back.