Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Senate is debating a proposal put forward by the Labor Party suggesting the division and dysfunction within the Turnbull government is a matter of public importance. I'm sure it's a matter of public interest, but I have to say that I'm not actually sure it's that important. I don't think it's really very important whether the leader is Mr Turnbull or Mr Dutton. It's going to be an appalling, disgraceful, divisive and destructive government whoever is leading it.

The current dysfunction is apparent to everybody, and the division has been apparent to everybody for literally years. It has come to a bit of a head in the last few days, and, frankly, where that goes I really don't care. Until we get rid of this government altogether, the harm being done to the majority of Australians will continue. I would really urge those people in the media—who, of course, love nothing better than to sit around all day interviewing each other about the latest leadership permutations and combinations and internal gossip—to actually focus on the policy issues, the legislation, as some of it will still get discussed in this place. Who knows what version of the national energy guarantee legislation we might deal with? But there is still other legislation being dealt with there. There are other matters before these houses of parliament that are hurting Australians, that are continuing to cause massive and potentially irreversible damage to our natural environment and that are undermining and fraying the social fabric. That is what the attention of not just the press gallery but all parliamentarians and legislators here should be focused on.

Not only have the internal personal enmities within the Liberal and National parties, both jointly and severally, been clear for a long time; it has also been clear for a long time that there has been no binding or uniting philosophy or value base in the coalition. As with any organisation that is basically part of the establishment, its main focus remains on keeping itself in power and continuing its privileges. Any shred of keeping a consistent value base is jettisoned a long time before it ever becomes a threat to maintaining those privileges and that grip on power.

It's all fine to have a diversity of views within an organisation, but the coalition have become so disconnected from each other in their parliamentary representation, let alone the disconnect from their membership base, that it's very clear that the main purpose of their existence is to keep a hold on power and keep anyone else out of it. It was not something that suddenly appeared this week or in the last month or even since Mr Turnbull rolled Mr Abbott. It was very, very clear from the very early days of the Abbott government, if not before—and that is what is hurting Australians. I guess you could say that is policy paralysis, although, when you see some of the very destructive policies that do get through this place, I wish they would be paralysed a bit more often and did even less to push through the measures that are causing ever-growing inequality in Australia, continuing to lead to massive environmental destruction and continuing to damage the fundamentals of our economy.

Let us not forget: we are in an era now where we have record corporate profits. Perhaps one thing that does unite this government is its attempt to give tax breaks to corporations when their profits are at record levels, whilst we have continuing wage stagnation, growing casualisation of the workforce, increasing job insecurity and increasing underemployment. Anybody who has been watching the inquiry in my state of Queensland recently would realise that we have outrageously entrenched, systemic amounts of wages theft. Many people are not getting even the inadequate wages that they should be getting. They are being ripped off to unimaginable levels by the banks and by the superannuation funds. People have been calling that out for years and years and years. I wouldn't say it has been policy paralysis; rather, it has been a conscious decision to enable that to continue, to harm Australians, because this is a government that puts its mates first. It puts its corporate donors first. It puts the interests of the political elite and the establishment first, and the vast majority of Australians last.

So I don't think the division and dysfunction within the Turnbull government at the moment is particularly important. It is a symptom of political parties that have decayed from the inside. I shouldn't reflect on you while you're in the chair, Acting Deputy President Bernardi, because I know you can't respond, but your actions in disconnecting yourself from that party is, itself, an indication of the fraying of all the divergent views within the current government, which means the only thing that's holding them together is trying to keep a grip on power.

We have seen, in this place, continuing attacks on the poorest people. We've seen the continuing expansion of the disgraceful robo-debt program through Centrelink, which is seeking to claw back money from the poorest in the community. In many cases, it's money that they don't actually owe; it's money that they are legally entitled to. We've seen a reverse onus of proof, targeting people who are already the poorest, trying to rip money back off them. We've seen the handing out of huge amounts of money, billions of dollars, to the wealthiest and the biggest corporations. We're seeing ever-increasing fees for people who, having finished university degrees and TAFE courses, are trying to retrain and trying to get into the workforce, having to go into debt to get those additional skills. Now they are being forced to pay back that debt before they've even got to an income level that matches the median, the middle, income level. By definition low-income earners are being forced to pay back a debt whilst they're still in poverty.

Newstart has not increased in real terms since 1994. Talk about policy paralysis: that's been a policy paralysis of both the Labor and Liberal parties for over two decades. That's where we need action. That's where the real hurt is. There is massive hurt for the enormous numbers of people who are homeless, who are in insecure housing, who are in financially-induced housing stress and having to pay massive proportions of their income on their rent or their mortgage because of the ridiculously overheated, turbocharged property market—turbocharged deliberately by governments that operate in the interests of their mates in the development industry rather than seeing housing as a fundamental human right to ensure somebody has a home. That's the policy paralysis that's been injected into this political system by the poison of neoliberal thinking, going way back to the 1980s when Labor was in government. That has paralysed the thinking of governments ever since, meaning that they put the interests of the market first and the interests of the community last. That is the paralysis that we've got to deal with.

This short-term political theatre that is happening at the moment is, I'm sure, fascinating to many people in this building. But I can tell you that most of the people outside in the community couldn't care less. They want to see these issues addressed. They want measures that will increase their wages, that will increase their job security, that will lift them out of poverty, that will increase Newstart, that will stop them getting evicted without cause, that will ensure that they can afford a home, that will ensure that they can afford health care for their children, that will ensure that they can get proper education for their children, that will ensure that the schools their kids are going to are properly funded, that will ensure that those people with disability or caring needs have proper support, that will ensure that people in regional and rural areas have proper services and adequate public transport, and that will ensure that there are measures to address the rapid expansion of greenhouse emissions that is causing not just environmental damage but the economic damage that goes along with it.

The paralysis has been longstanding, and the hurt to the Australian community—and many other communities around the globe, because governments elsewhere have also adopted the mantra of neoliberalism and austerity—is very long-standing. We need major change. We need it very quickly. Who leads the Liberal Party at the moment is irrelevant to that change. They could pull a name out of a hat; it's not going to give us the change we need. What we need to change is the government and the people who are elected in the House of Representatives.