Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Australians continue to suffer in a cost-of-living crisis caused by corporate profits, yet the RBA, aided and abetted by the Labor political party, continue to kick the teeth of workers by jacking up interest rates. We now have fresh evidence that inflation above the target rate is being driven largely by corporate profiteering. The RBA knows this, and the government knows this too, and, yet again, working Australians are being pummelled by the blunt tool of monetary policy, being forced to suffer for the inflation that they are not causing.

The government is delighted to be able to keep the RBA's interest rate rises at arm's length, but the government is also to blame for the cost-of-living crisis Australians have found themselves in through no fault of their own. Time and time again, we've seen a government unwilling to take meaningful action on cost-of-living relief. What we don't need are useless platitudes. What we need is a government brave enough to actually make policy decisions.

We need to reverse the atrocious quarter of a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts for the super rich, we need an immediate rent freeze and we need public education that is truly free. If Labor scrapped their stage 3 tax cuts, we could fund real cost-of-living relief. We could have a two-year freeze on rents. Then we could cap rent hikes at two per cent for 24 months. It's been done in Victoria, British Colombia, New York and Germany. Let's do that here too and give real, meaningful cost-of-living relief to Australians.

We could make public education truly free. We've seen the exorbitant costs that even parents of students in public schools are having to pay for their child's education, and we're hearing how university students are getting smashed by student debt and people who are trying to pay off HECS bills are having that eat into their income. Of the $243½ billion of Labor's stage 3 tax cuts, $188 billion, or 77 per cent, of the benefit will go to the wealthiest 20 per cent of the population. Even worse, you are giving the richest one per cent as much as the bottom 65 per cent. Australians deserve a government that is serious about cost of living and that abolishes tax cuts for the rich.