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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator McKim today relating to the fossil fuel sector.

In question time I asked Senator Birmingham repeatedly about the budget's public subsidies to encourage the burning of fossil fuels, and he consistently failed to acknowledge that point. He dissembled, he changed the subject and he answered questions that weren't asked, but what he did not ever mention was the $51 billion of direct subsidies—public funds—in this budget allocated to encouraging the burning of fossil fuels.

To state the absolute bleeding obvious, our climate is breaking down around us. It's going to be catastrophic for billions of people. We have mere years to prevent the worst effects of the climate catastrophe, and every single day counts in our response. What did we see in the government's response yesterday? Handouts for fossil fuel companies. We saw favourable treatment for billionaires to encourage more environmental destruction and the ongoing burning of coal, oil and gas. This is a budget put together by climate criminals. And they can't say that they didn't know, because, at the same time that they are giving $50 billion plus of public subsidies to encourage the burning of fossil fuels, they are intervening to insure homes that are becoming uninsurable because of climate change. The government is offering a token amount of money for responses to disasters, like droughts, fires and floods, that we know are going to be more common and more intense as a result of climate change, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, the destruction of forests and land clearing. They are all things that this government puts public subsidies into. The government are the arsonists, and they're trying to claim that they're the fire brigade!

As if paying billionaires directly to open up new gas fields to implement the burning of gas weren't bad enough, the government are also refusing to make billionaires pay their fair share of tax. Australia's billionaires increased their wealth by $90 billion last year, in the middle of a global pandemic, when so many Australians were doing it tough, and they have not been asked to chip in a single cent of that obscene growth in their wealth to help us fund the services that Australian people want: better hospitals, better public education, better public transport systems, better disability support—just to name a few.

Meanwhile, on the government's own projections, wages will go backwards in real terms for the next two years. Let's think about that: wages are to go backwards in real terms for the next two years. This is not a bug. This is not an unintended consequence of this budget. It is a feature of this budget, because the major donors to the Liberal and National parties want to keep wages low so they can keep making obscene profits and keep dodging their responsibility to fund the essential public services that Australians want and expect from their governments. Wages are going backwards in real terms because that is exactly what the government want. And that is because their major donors, in this regime of institutionalised bribery that is called political donations in this country, want wages to shrink. The other side of that coin, of course, is house prices spiralling out of control. Again, that's not a bug. That's not an unintended consequence. It's a feature. You're pricing a whole generation of young people out of the housing market and you are deliberately causing wages to go backwards. Shame on you all.

Question agreed to.