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

When Mr Albanese was elected he made a promise to the Australian people. He promised that no-one would be left behind and that no-one would be held back. Well, that promise that he made to the Australian people was broken in his first budget last night. After this budget, we know we're not all in this together. Too many Australians are being left behind, and many more are being held back.

This is a Labor budget in name only. They say they're going to get wages moving again, but wages are flatlining over the forward estimates. They say they're committed to full employment, but unemployment is flagged to go up. They say they're providing cost-of-living relief, but those who are on the lowest incomes are going to bear most of the pain. The Treasurer's buzzword is 'responsible'. But if you're leaving behind the people who need it the most, if you are publicly subsidising the burning of fossil fuels in the middle of a climate crisis, then this cannot be considered a responsible budget. There is more than a whiff of austerity about this budget, because it's the people in our country who are the least well off who will feel the most pain. Meanwhile, in a deliberate policy choice, the stage 3 tax cuts for billionaires, for CEOs and for politicians are baked in. It's champagne for the top end and it's real pain for the people who are doing it the toughest.

But we're facing two crises here: a cost-of-living crisis and a climate and ecological crisis. People's incomes are going down, and people's homes are ending up underwater. Food is getting more expensive. Grocery prices have risen by 17 per cent this year, and too many Australians simply cannot afford fresh fruit and vegetables. And, thanks to the climate-crisis-fuelled floods around this country, food prices are flagged to go up even more. Meanwhile the big corporations like the big two supermarkets are raking in megaprofits. Housing's getting more expensive. Rents are currently rising four times as fast as wages. But if you've got wealthy parents, you're going OK. Young people are being locked out of the great Australian dream of owning their own home. They're being forced into unsafe tenancy just to keep a roof over their heads. Electricity is going through the roof. At a retail level, bills are going to go up by 56 per cent over the next two years, and we are being extorted for our own gas by multinationals who send the profits offshore. We're in the middle of a global gas boom, and our gas tax is so utterly rorted by the big corporations that we're actually going to get less tax as a result. There is a half-billion reduction in the petroleum resource rent tax revenue forecast in this budget.

Child care going up, education going up, transport going up—there is real pain for a lot of people in this budget, but, instead of doing something significant to provide genuine and immediate cost-of-living relief, we've got a Treasurer who's playing at the margins with many measures that are delayed and won't be implemented now, when people need the help. As I said, wages aren't going to move. We've got too many people in insecure work, too many people suffering from wage theft. Short-term contracts and labour hire are driving down wages. Working people need more power in this country because the big corporations have gotten too much power. They're making huge profits. Their share of the economy, the share of the economy that is going into profits, hasn't been this high since the gilded age.

At the same time we are facing, in the short, medium and long term, the collapse of our climate, fuelled by coal and gas corporations and the psychopath that run them. The climate crisis is part of what is driving the cost-of-living crisis—insurance costs, damage to infrastructure, disruptions to supply chains, including food supply, or just your suburb or your town going underwater or burning in a bushfire, the fear, the anxiety and the stress. Burning coal and gas for cash, for profits, is killing people and it's costing us billions of dollars.

So what's the government's response to all of this? Labor's response: baking in the stage 3 tax cuts for the billionaires and handing out billions to fossil fuel corporations. They're driving inequality higher and pouring petrol on the climate fire. Labor is leaving too many people behind. The stage 3 tax cuts will destroy Australia's progressive income tax system. They're going to give a $9,000-a-year tax cut to the billionaires and to the CEOs and to everyone who sits in this place as either a senator or an MP. They will benefit predominantly already very wealthy, rich, old, white men, but they won't benefit many young people. They won't benefit as many women as men and they won't benefit as many people of colour as they do white people.

They'll drive inequality, and let's think about this: $254 billion that could have gone into providing genuine and immediate cost-of-living relief for the people who are actually going to feel the pain from flatlining wages, unemployment going up, the prospect of more interest rates hikes and spiralling electricity and gas prices. We could have helped them out and done much more for them. But, no, the Treasurer made a choice last night to look after the top end and walk away from those people. We could put in place a rent freeze, so people's rents were more affordable. We could wipe student debt so that young people and people who've finished their university degrees would have more money in their pockets. We could make dental and mental part of Medicare. We could make child care free. These measures won't drive inflation, as the Treasurer would have you believe. They will reduce inflation and they will improve people's lives. And I want to remind people: improving people's lives is the whole point of government. It's why we're all here, and the Treasurer made a choice to not do that last night. What his choice was, at a time when people are trying to work out whether they're going to pay their power bills or afford the groceries, when they're making huge sacrifices to keep their heads above water, at a time when inequality is at a record high, was to have a Labor government giving the richest people in this country another $9,000 a year. If you're someone who works in a pub, or cleans in a school or hospital, or looks after a shop, or had to leave home and work during the pandemic, you're very unlikely to benefit from these tax cuts. Remember, there is nothing in the stage 3 tax cuts for somebody on a minimum wage. What sort of Labor Party abandons progressive taxation? The international environment didn't make the Labor Party do this. It wasn't the war in Ukraine. The Liberal Party didn't make the Labor Party do this. It was a Labor choice to do this.

This budget also hands out tens of billions in public subsidies to the big fossil fuel corporations. These corporations are driving the climate crisis, which is turbocharging extreme weather, wreaking havoc across this continent and across the world and wreaking havoc with people's lives. Those corporations in the main send their profits offshore and rip off Australian consumers. The unions understand it. The welfare sector understands it. Many economists in this country understand it. People in the pubs and the cafes and people picking up their kids after school understand that giving billions of dollars to people who don't need it, whether it's the top end of town or the big fossil fuel corporations—a handout during a cost-of-living crisis and a climate crisis—is just dumb. It is dumb and counterproductive.

Labor used to be the party of working people, Yes, Labor have fiddled at the margins on cost-of-living relief in this budget. They're prepared to reduce the cost of child care for some people in a while, at the margins—a bit here, a bit there—and build a few new affordable homes. I might add that it's not a million new homes that this budget is delivering; it's actually 10,000, when you look at the detail. The headline is a million. The budget detail says, 'Ten thousand, and cross your fingers and hope that the private sector builds the other 990,000.' You see in this budget a Labor Party that's lost its appetite and its nerve for nation-building, big reforms.

One of the most disappointing things is that, in this parliament, we've actually got the numbers to change things for the better. If Labor worked with the Greens, we could scrap the stage 3 tax cuts and pass measures which dramatically reduce the cost of living—dental and mental into Medicare, freeze rents, make child care and education free, wipe student debt, expand Medicare. We could make the gas corporations and the fossil fuel corporations pay their fair share of tax. But Labor has lost its nerve. We've been robbed, swindled, scammed and stood over by some of the world's biggest, most powerful and most polluting corporations. They give donations. They get special treatment. They're stealing our gas and selling it overseas, and funnelling their profits overseas. The government of Australia for far too long has been an entity that is owned, lock, stock and smoking barrel, by the resources industry.

If Labor had the courage, we've got the numbers. If we worked together we could pass measures that would drive down the cost of living without increasing inflation. If we got past the now Liberal ideology, if we stood for the people and not the big corporations and the wealthy, we could make a huge difference. We stand ready to raise Newstart to $88 a day so that people don't have to live in grinding, daily poverty. But Labor has chosen not to do that. We stand ready to pass laws to outlaw insecure work and give working people more power so they can secure the pay rises they deserve. Together we could give workers real rights, restore the power of unions and end wage theft. But Labor has lost its nerve; this budget shows that. Its words are hollow. It's rolled over at the first sign of pressure, even from a weak, divided, irrelevant opposition.

Well, the Greens stand ready to work with Labor to genuinely build a million new homes. We stand ready to make the Prime Minister's story about growing up in public housing a reality that will be accessible to everyone. But, instead of ending the public housing waiting list, under this government the public will be languishing on the waiting list for years. We need more than a story from the Prime Minister: we need the foot to be taken off our necks.

I want to say something about inflation, because the Treasurer has missed a fantastic opportunity here. He has missed an opportunity because he's been too busy blaming inflationary pressures on what's happening around the world. And, of course, there are things happening around the world: conflict, climate change, supply chain issues. Of course they exist. But, domestically, what we do know is that it's not wages that are driving inflation; it is corporate profiteering that is driving inflation in this country. And what we need to address that is a corporate super profits tax.

There is no need for the Treasurer to wring his hands and pretend that he has got no levers to pull to address inflation in this country. There is no need for the Treasurer to stand back and watch as the Reserve Bank continues to pile interest rate rise on top of interest rate rise, condemning the less well off in this country to yet more pain. He needs to pull the lever, introduce a corporate super profits tax and rein in the rampant price gouging of the big corporations. I flag that I will be moving a second reading amendment, Madame Deputy President.