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

I can indicate that the Australian Greens maintain our support for Senator Patrick's amendment to the Treasury Laws Amendment (COVID-19 Economic Response No. 2) Bill 2021 and we very strongly believe that the Senate should insist on that amendment. I also want to make the point that I was waiting for someone from the Australian Labor Party to get up and put a position—I hope we are going to hear a position from the Labor Party in this debate and they're not just going to sit there in an attempt to let it get through to the keeper. What is clear is that the Australian Labor Party are not going to insist that this amendment remain. They are walking away from the position that they held last week.

This is a sad day for transparency in this country, and it's a sad day for accountability. But, most importantly, it's an extremely sad day for the long-suffering taxpayers of Australia, who've forked out many, many tens of billions of their hard-earned dollars, which this government has thrown to its mates the billionaires and the big corporations. The Senate today, by the looks of it, is not going to insist on a modicum of transparency in regard to the biggest stimulus package in this country's history. So once again we see the Liberal Party shovelling billions of dollars to big, profitable corporations, and the Australian Labor Party, having made a few flapping noises last week, are going to give them the green light to keep ripping off Australian taxpayers.

You don't have to look far for a different approach to this. In fact, you don't have to look any further than across the ditch to New Zealand, where we know who got the taxpayer dollars because the New Zealand government put it all online in a searchable database. There's only one reason why, in Australia, the government and now the Labor Party don't support this information going online in our country: it's because they want to cover up which big, profitable corporations trousered billions of dollars of taxpayers' money.

Senator Lambie interjecting—

I'll take that interjection from Senator Lambie. She mentioned political donations—the institutionalised bribery and the institutionalised corruption that are political donations in this country.

But back to this program. We have seen the highest levels of waste in history, with only about one-quarter of the $60 billion directly benefiting workers. The government allowed big corporations to make off like bandits and send this money off into tax havens, while hundreds of thousands of students, single parents and jobseekers are excluded from this latest scheme. Eleven of Australia's billionaires were enriched by JobKeeper, while universities, the arts and far too many casual workers in precarious jobs didn't get a cent.

Let's not forget that the Morrison government had to be dragged kicking and screaming by experts, the union movement and the Australian Greens to implement JobKeeper in the first place. But when Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg put their own personal spin on it—as they had to because, of course, it wouldn't be Liberal Party policy in Australia if it didn't exclude the people doing it toughest, whilst handing out billions of dollars in public money to some of the biggest corporations in the country so they could deliver record profits to their shareholders—75 per cent of the $90 billion that was ultimately outlaid didn't make it to working Australians. That's $68 billion that didn't make it to working Australians; it went to shareholders. It could have gone to those who most need it, but instead it lined the pockets of CEOs and wealthy investors. In just the first 24 weeks, $25 billion went to businesses which ultimately didn't satisfy the eligibility requirements. In that same time, $9 billion was paid to over 150,000 firms that ultimately recorded increases in their revenue. Sixty-six big corporations on the ASX 300 received JobKeeper. Fifty-eight of them reported positive earnings and 34 of these companies reported increases in underlying profits relative to pre-pandemic levels. What an absolute rort this was, yet the parliament and this Senate are not even going to insist on basic transparency measures.

Just yesterday the SMH reported that Lachlan Murdoch's Nova received $10.6 million in JobKeeper payments while recording, of course, a net profit of $16.88 million. That takes the total of billionaires' companies that have been profitable, that have rorted JobKeeper and that have refused to pay it back to 11. That is 11 of Australia's billionaires—10 per cent of the billionaires in this country. That is Lachlan Murdoch, for his company Nova. That is Kerry Stokes, through Sevenwest. That is Gerry Harvey, through Harvey Norman. That is James Packer, through Crown casino. That is Len Ainsworth, through Aristocrat poker machines. That is John Gandel, through the Vicinity property group. That is Brett Blundy, through Lovisa. That is Mark Besen, through Home Consortium. That is Nick Politis, through Eagers Automotive. That is Raphael Geminder, through PACT Group. And that is Dale Elphinstone, through Engenco.

One of those, Gerry Harvey, has been absolutely chortling all the way to the bank, with Harvey Norman keeping $22 million in JobKeeper payments despite its profits doubling to $462 million, in the middle of a pandemic, while 1.1 million working Australians were ineligible for JobKeeper. Around half the businesses in the arts sector were ineligible. Universities and their staff were deliberately excluded. Casual staff who had been employed for less than six months were ineligible. Basically, any group that is unlikely to vote in numbers for the coalition got shafted. New businesses missed out. Many small businesses missed out. Over the first six months alone, they missed out on $20,000 per employee.

What should we be doing here, when we are faced with this rort of all rorts? The very least we should be doing is insisting on basic transparency measures—as the Labor Party have said time after time after time. Here's Mr Andrew Leigh on ABC News Radio on 28 January: 'The information is at the fingertips of the ATO. They simply need to disclose it to the Australian people.' Well, the Australian Greens could not agree more. The information's there. Put it out so that the Australian people can see how their money was actually spent by this government. But no: the Labor Party is not going to insist.

Just last week we saw Mr Leigh standing in the House of Representatives calling for a transparency scheme. Okay, the threshold he was proposing might have been a little bit different, but it was basically, in effect, the same scheme as the one Senator Patrick proposed, which is the same scheme that is contained in the legislation that was originally drafted by the Australian Greens and tabled by me on behalf of my Greens colleagues and which is currently at a Senate inquiry. I say this to the Labor Party: if the government chose to delay the passage of this bill because the Senate insisted on some entirely reasonable transparency provisions, that would be on the government; it wouldn't be on the Labor Party. You would find that if you would actually stand up, grow a spine and mount that argument then the Australian people would be with you on it, and they'd be against the government on it. But you'll never know, because you're folding—again—as you fold on refugee policy, as you fold on progressive taxation policy, as you fold on every single law that walks Australia down the dangerous road to a police state and a surveillance state and as you fold on so much more. (Time expired)