Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the 'Slashing Government Services Bill 2019', or should that be the 'Trashing Progressive Taxation Bill' or the 'Increasing Inequality Bill'? I am so angry and despairing that this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Relief So Working Australians Keep More Of Their Money) Bill 2019, is being proposed and absolutely horrified that Labor and most of the crossbench look like they are signing up to this attack on low- and middle-income hardworking Australians. We've heard a lot today about low- and middle-income hardworking Australians. Make no mistake; this bill is an attack on low- and middle-income hardworking Australians, because this bill puts a $158 billion hole in the 10-year revenue forecast. This is on top of the $167 billion hole that the 2018-19 budget tax cuts put in place. So in total it's a $325 billion hole—$325 billion over the next 10 years that the government would rather hand out, largely to high-income earners, than invest in services and in our society. Imagine what we could do with that $325 billion. It's a mind-bogglingly big amount of money. Imagine what that $325 billion would do for reducing inequality and ending poverty in this country. We could invest that money into public housing, raising Newstart, bringing dental care into Medicare and creating a world-class mental health system. We could make free child care available for hundreds of thousands of young families, for the majority of Australians who are accessing child care. We could make TAFE and university free. We could invest billions of dollars into our underfunded public schools. These are the political choices that we are making, that are going to be made in this place today. It is a choice—it's a political choice—as to whether we invest in our society, invest in supporting services for low- and middle- and all-income Australians, or give this massive tax handout to those who already have the most.

How much of a dent could we make on the climate crisis with $325 billion? We could invest in solar, wind, pumped hydro, the electricity transmission network, public transport, our electric vehicle charging network and clean hydrogen exports to wean our economy off coal and gas and oil. How much could we invest in revegetating and rewilding our landscapes, increasing our carbon stocks while helping our regions cope with drought and restoring critical habitat to help stem the extinction crisis? Or imagine the jobs and the nation-building potential of spending $325 billion extra on infrastructure. We could expand and upgrade rail services across our cities and regions. We could expand and electrify our bus services right across Australia so that all Australians have access to fast, frequent, clean, affordable public transport. We could build the long-awaited high-speed rail between Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane. Why is no-one in this chamber other than the Greens asking these questions? Why is it taken as a fait accompli that this is the right way to spend $325 billion of revenue over the next decade?

We Greens accept that the economy needs a stimulus, but there are so many better ways to create that stimulus than giving tax cuts to those who already have a lot. All the measures that I've just mentioned would provide massively more stimuli than handing over billions in tax cuts to the wealthy, who are likely to sock most of it away in their bank accounts, in their shares, in overseas travel. The difference in stimuli is that what happens when you give more money to low-income earners is that you increase Newstart, you increase youth and student allowances, you reduce health costs, you reduce childcare costs and you provide new jobs in green infrastructure, and every single dollar that is spent there is going to flow back into the local economy. Plus, we can expand and increase the low-income tax offset, which would put extra money in the pockets of low-income earners in a targeted way, rather than splashing most of the largesse around to the wealthy, who, frankly, are not going to trickle this money down into the economy. The trickle-down effect is absolute bunkum, and it has been shown to be that over the last 40 years. It has been shown to not exist, to be wrong. All the trickling down that is going to occur from this largesse being given to the richest in our society will be the trickling down of the final drops of one bottle of Dom Perignon before popping open the next bottle.

Yes, this government took this package to the election, but fewer than six million of the over 14½ million Australians who voted in the 2019 Senate election voted for this package. There is no mandate here, except for the fictional one that this government is claiming for this atrocity. The people of Australia elected the government into a minority in this chamber, so let us do some scrutiny. Let's give them some opposition. Let's embrace our mandate to be a check on this government. This bill is a massive failure of vision by the government, by the opposition and by the crossbench. We're three days into this new parliament, and the number one priority of this chamber is giving the richest 20 per cent of income earners a great, big tax cut. Frankly, it is sickening.

The Greens will not stand for it. We need leadership in this country to tackle the challenges of our time, not business as usual. We need leadership to be tackling inequality in this country, to be tackling our climate crisis, to be tackling our extinction crisis. It is not the time for business as usual, where the rich get the spoils and the rest of Australia is left to pick up the pieces. I call on all members of this chamber to rethink their position on this legislation and to vote against what is a dagger in the heart of a fair and equal society.