Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance, the Morrison government's failure to deliver. I'll tell you who it hasn't failed to deliver for: vested interests and its big business donors. They're doing quite nicely, thank you very much, out of this government, and, likewise, the government's political party is doing quite nicely out of the donations that come from that large sector. There have been millions of dollars in donations made to the Liberal-National Party since they have been in government—from the big mining companies, from the gambling industry, from property developers, from all sorts of people that want favours and want policy written that favours their bottom line. And, hey presto, we get tax cuts for those large companies and tax cuts for the wealthy. So it sounds like they're delivering quite nicely for their donor mates.

We know that fossil fuel companies give tens of millions of dollars in donations, and this government continues to deliver fossil fuel subsidies, accelerated depreciation that nobody else gets, discounted diesel fuel that nobody else gets. Now they're getting a fast-tracking of environmental laws. And you know what else they're getting? They're getting a commission stacked with representatives from the gas industry that don't have to disclose their conflicts of interest to the public or, in some cases, don't have to disclose them at all, and a commission that's recommending, who would have guessed it, yet more investment in gas infrastructure.

This government is delivering quite nicely for the big polluters, who happen to be big donors to its political party, and it is absolutely negligent in dealing with the climate crisis. The government could be investing in job-rich renewable energy. It could be funding schools and hospitals. But instead it's dishing out tax cuts to the wealthy and to big business and it's paving the way for yet more dirty gas to wreck our land, to wreck our water and to wreck our climate.