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

What a great topic to be debating at the end of this Senate week:

That the Senate agrees that corporate super profits taxes could offset the cost of providing cost-of-living relief, including the provision of free childcare, truly free public education, abolishing student debt and putting dental and mental health into Medicare.

This was a proposition that we took to the election that resulted in the Greens having a record vote, electing six more members of parliament to this place. The idea that we should be taxing the very wealthy and using those taxes to fund services that people need and that people want resonates with the Australian community. And it's not a surprise, because we have seen the tax that is paid by the super wealthy in Australia decrease at the same time as we have seen the services provided to Australians decrease in quality over the last—well, for decades, basically, under neoliberal governments. We need to shift this. We need to acknowledge that by increasing taxes; by having a corporate super profits tax; by taxing properly the mining companies, the coal and gas companies, who are making an absolute motza at the moment; by having a billionaire tax to tax the billionaires who made massive profits out of COVID while the rest of us were suffering. We had billionaires like Gerry Harvey doing exceptionally well and making a profit out of JobKeeper.

In particular, we should not be going ahead with tax cuts that are going to reduce the taxes and increase the income of the very wealthy in our society. Why on earth this incoming Labor government, who claims to be speaking for the people, is supporting the previous government's stage 3 tax cuts is beyond me, because the critical figure, which I find astounding, is that the cost of those stage 3 tax cuts to the budget bottom line over the 10 years is over $200 billion. We know that, if that $200 billion was instead being spent in services, in supporting people, it would have a much greater impact on the health of the economy because we know that every dollar that you put in the pocket of somebody on a low income gets spent. If you're putting a dollar in the pocket of somebody who earns over $200,000, the likelihood is that it just gets put away in investments, it gets spent on overseas travel or it gets spent on other things that do not generate the same amount of economic activity as spending that money generates.

If we increase income support, if we increase the income of the lowest people in our society, the people who are absolutely struggling to get by, who are living in poverty—every extra dollar you put in the pocket of somebody who is surviving on JobKeeper at the moment will be spent. It will be spent at the local shops. It will be spent buying basic food, vegetables, clothing and shoes. It will be spent on the absolute essentials of life. We know that spending money in that way is going to make a much greater contribution to our economy than giving tax cuts to the very wealthy, who do not need those tax cuts—who absolutely do not need those tax cuts.

As I said, this was a platform that we took to the election. This resonated with people. The concept of the basics of free dental care and mental health care being included under Medicare so that people could afford to go and get their teeth fixed; the idea of genuinely free education, from child care right through to tertiary education—these are the ideas that resonate with Australian society because we know that they are fair. They are creating a fairer, more just, more sustainable society. And we know that, by doing that, we get healthier people, and it leads to a healthier community for all of us.

These are the sorts of measures that the Australian people want to see, and they are the measures that we can afford to take. We can afford to be taxing the very wealthy—the people who are making a huge amount of money—and to be spending that money on the services that we need and that we deserve.

In the case of income support, it is our duty to be lifting people out of poverty. It is immoral that we, as a society, have a vast number of people—three million families—living under the poverty line. It's a political choice to be leaving them there, living in poverty. Six hundred thousand children in single-parent families are living under the poverty line. We need to take action to increase income support so that that's no longer the case, so that they can afford to be living a decent life and putting food on the table. It is a political choice that we are not. The Greens absolutely and unashamedly will continue to speak up for increasing the taxes on those who can afford to pay, so that we can spend the money on the services that we all need. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.