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

We now know enough about this budget to offer some informed commentary on it. Because of the budget leaks and the budget drops that we've seen over the last few weeks, we know that this budget will choose inequality over equality and we know that this budget will choose climate collapse over climate sustainability. Budgets are about choices, and this budget chooses wealth inequality and climate collapse. It is important to know that the choices we make now will have massive and long-reaching consequences for the climate and for the people we represent in this place in particular.

This budget will contain tens of billions of dollars of direct corporate subsidies to the fossil fuel sector—big coal, big oil and big gas. And we know that the mining and burning of fossil fuels are the single biggest drivers of our climate breaking down around us. This budget will show that we are being led by a government that picks big corporations and their millionaire mates, many of whom are direct donors to the LNP, over the millions of Australians who are unemployed or underemployed. It's a budget for the millionaires, not for the millions. With the money the government is committing to tax cuts in this budget, we could have a green recovery, a green new deal, where we could create hundreds of thousands of good jobs that ensure that people have an income that they can live on and that would create a strong and environmentally sustainable economy.

If you want one window into where this government's priorities lie, look at what's happening to company profits, look at what's happened to company profits over the last seven years and look at what's been happening to wages over the last seven years. Over the last seven years, corporate profits are up massively and people's wages are down. Wage growth is at its lowest rate in Australia since records began. Conversely, corporate profits are at the highest level in Australia since records have been kept. Working people are getting less for their efforts, and the executives and the shareholders are getting more. All this was happening before the shock of the pandemic that we are living through.

Tax cuts on top of this trend are only going to make inequality worse. We know that these tax cuts are not going to adequately stimulate the economy, because we've heard this story before. I want to be clear: we should be looking after low-income people, we should be raising the rate of JobSeeker and we should be providing relief to people on low incomes, because it's the right thing to do and because we don't want people to live in poverty. But when you look at the first round of the tax cuts, which, according to the government, was all about stimulating the economy, instead it just got trousered. People saved it rather than spent it. We know that that is true, and we are now, unlike when the first tranche came in, in a recession. Why would Mr Frydenberg think this round of tax cuts is suddenly going to magically be spent rather than saved? Of course, he knows it's not, which reveals the real reason for these tax cuts—that is, that they are ideologically-driven largess to the millionaires and the big corporates in this country. That is why this government is bringing forward the tax cuts.

There is a better way we can invest in a jobs guarantee. We can invest in a Green New Deal. We can invest in government backed jobs and income guarantees to help to create a good life for far more of our people and to make sure that nobody is left behind. We need bold and strong government investment in green manufacturing, in sustainable infrastructure to create jobs and opportunities to build the foundations of a fairer and cleaner economy. And we need massive investment into public services for our community—health, education, public transport, child care, aged care—those public services that people expect governments to deliver locally and at a high quality. Economies need to work for people, not the other way around. And until we have an economy that works for people and until we see budgets that will prioritise people over the economy, and prioritise nature and climate over environmental destruction, we are in for yet more of the same.