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

The Greens will be supporting these bills, the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2022-2023, the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2022-2023 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2022-2023. This was a budget brought down in the face of massive challenges at a personal level, a local level, a community level, a state and territory level, a national level and a global level. This was a budget brought down while our climate is breaking down around us. This was a budget brought down while biodiversity is crumbling away as we speak. This was a budget brought down when Australia is facing massive wealth inequality, where the rich are getting richer and millions of Australians are being ground into poverty. This was a budget brought down when renters and mortgage holders are getting smashed, with 12 interest rate rises in 13 months—something we have never seen before in Australia's history. They are getting smashed by those interest rate rises which are owned by the government because the government is refusing to pull the fiscal levers at its disposal to help deal with the spike in inflation. This is a budget that is being brought down as an entire generation of Australians are being priced out of the great Australian dream of owning their own home. It is a budget being brought down while the millions of Australians who are renters are facing double-digit rent increases every year, where the power lies with the landlords, not the renters, and too many of those renters are faced with extreme rental stress and the danger of becoming homeless or having to couch surf because they can't afford to pay the rent.

That is the scenario that nearly half a century of neoliberalism has created in this country. That is the context in which this budget has been brought down. So how did Labor respond to these great challenges? They brought down a budget that has over $40 billion out of the public purse to directly subsidise the burning of fossil fuels. I will tell you now that, when history is written about this time and people look back and say, 'In 2023, a government that liked to pretend it was progressive and liked to cosplay as a progressive government spent $40 billion in a budget to directly subsidise the burning of fossil fuels,' that will go down as a massive historical black mark not just against the Labor Party but against our country as a whole. While entire Pacific island nations are in the process of disappearing, literally, off the global maps thanks to sea-level rise, while we are seeing record ice loss in Antarctica as we have this debate today, while sea temperatures in the North Atlantic are spiking out of control and while we are seeing all around the planet unprecedented climate disruption and biodiversity loss, here is a government that still supports logging native forests and has over $40 billion in its budget to directly subsidise fossil fuels. In the face of massive wealth inequality, it's a government that has brought down a budget that bakes in a $24.85-a-day tax cut—a tax cut of nearly 25 bucks a day—to everyone who sits in this place and to the billionaires in this country, and that thinks it can buy off people on JobSeeker with a $2.85-a-day pay rise, leaving them to be ground ever further into poverty.

We've had confirmation today of what we've seen over many decades in this country—that wage restraint is only for working people in Australia, and doesn't apply to the bosses and doesn't apply to company directors. The ABC is reporting today that CEO pay in Australia is rising at 15 per cent—15 per cent, folks—on average. If you're a CEO—nice work if you can get it—that's a 19 per cent pay rise amongst the ASX 200. It is a 15 per cent pay rise on average for the CEOs but a 19 per cent pay rise if you are the CEO of an ASX 200 corporation—the big corporations—in this country. This is an entire business class, and all we hear from them is just a constant drone—or whine, if you will—about declining productivity.

Let me ask this question: if productivity growth is so bad, why do CEOs deserve a 20 per cent pay rise? Answer me that one, colleagues. I'll answer it for you here, because we know why: it's all about the profit. We've seen that with PricewaterhouseCoopers and the terrific job that Senator Barbara Pocock has been doing exposing that particular mess, that particular scam, that particular conspiracy from PricewaterhouseCoopers to monetise confidential Treasury information. It's all about the profit—parasitic corporate giants, many of them with monopoly powers, using the cover of supply shocks to jack up their prices and make more profits and fuel more inflation along the way, which the RBA then responds to by putting up interest rates and smashing mortgage holders and renters for a problem they didn't cause.

We had confirmation from the OECD last week that, in Australia, profit is responsible for more than half of domestic inflation. The Greens totally accept there are global supply side issues that are driving inflation. But what we know from the OECD—

That renowned organisation with that radical leftist at their head, Senator Brockman, who you know far better than me—with that radical leftist, former senator Cormann, in charge! We've had confirmation today that this profit is being used to jack up CEO pay. That's what is happening here, colleagues. It needs to be spelled out. It needs to be placed on the table.

I want to say this: we hear a lot about the dangers of a so-called wage price spiral. I also want to be clear that, if there was genuinely a wage price spiral happening in Australia, that would actually justify action in the monetary policy space—absolutely no question about that. But we heard from the Treasury secretary, Dr Kennedy, in estimates, that there is no sign of a wage price spiral in Australia. I say this to you, colleagues: the only place in Australia where there is any sign at all of a wage price spiral is in places like Toorak and Double Bay. There is a good wage price spiral going on over there, colleagues, because that's where the CEOs live, in their multimillion-dollar mansions.

So what is the Labor Party going to do about all the CEOs of the ASX 200 companies getting a 19 per cent pay rise off the back of rank profiteering and price gouging by corporations? What's the Labor Party going to do to them? It's going to give them a great, fat tax cut. That's right; that's what the modern Labor Party is all about—a $9,000-a-year tax break for struggling CEOs dealing with a mere 19 per cent annual pay rise. Then Labor's going to back in the RBA putting 130,000 more Australians out of work, because those are the figures that this budget was predicated on. That will mean the CEOs can reap even bigger profits by driving real wages backwards even faster than they are currently going backwards.

That is the sum of the wit of the current Labor government: take a policy that Mr Scott Morrison came up with as Treasurer, take the policy that Mr Morrison then super-sized as Prime Minister, and make it your own—the stage 3 tax cuts. Make sure all those struggling CEOs out there can get even richer and buy more investment properties and make sure all the people who are not so rich stay not so rich. Then put another 130,000 of the not-so-rich people out of work so the workers don't get too uppity and start thinking maybe they should get their share. Well, fantastic—great move! Well done, Labor!

What we are seeing in this country is nothing less than an upward transfer of wealth. This is reverse wealth redistribution. It's the enrichment of the wealthy at the expense of the poor. People are working longer hours for less money while their bosses are giving themselves pay rises at more than twice the rate of inflation. Let's think about that for a minute, colleagues. While real rages are plunging downwards, the bosses get a pay rise more than double the inflation rate.

People are feeling ripped off in this country for one very good reason: they are being ripped off in this country. That is what is going on. Young people in particular are being absolutely smashed. They're told a complete lie about their future, and it is a lie that used to be the truth, used to be part of the social contract in this country. But it's a lie today, because young people are being told: study hard, work hard, save for a house, like your parents did, and you can have a good life. That's what they are told, and it was true, decades ago. Well, that bright future, that nice life, is being robbed from them by the corporate classes of Australia, facilitated by the major parties in this place.

That uni degree is going to cost them tens of thousands of dollars, and that debt is indexed every year, meaning that many will never pay it off and will carry the weight of that debt around their necks for the rest of their lives—that indexation and that debt created by a generation of politicians who had access to free university. That house that young people are told they should save for is completely unaffordable now, unless Mummy and Daddy can help them out by loaning them the money or gifting them a house. If they were lucky enough to sneak into the market over the last few years—maybe they believed what Dr Lowe told them when he said interest rates wouldn't go up until 2024 at the earliest—the RBA is smashing them with interest rate rise after interest rates rise, sending them to the wall and in many cases turning them inside out, where their mortgage is now larger than the value of their property. And if they're renting they are being smashed to pieces by the same wealthy generation of landlords.

And who's done all this to those millions of Australian young people and those millions of Australians being ground into poverty? It is the people in this room right now who are listening to this speech, the people who do the bidding of corporations—because, let's face it, they want to sit on the boards of these corporations in the future. They're doing the bidding of landlords because they've completely given up on education, hard work and decent jobs as a pathway to a better life in Australia. According to the Labor and Liberal parties, if you don't own multiple houses then you are not worth the time of day. And, as far as they are concerned, it's tough luck if you can't afford the rent. This budget gives nearly $17 billion in direct handouts to wealthy property moguls and contains no money—no money at all—for direct investment into new social and affordable housing. There is nothing for renters, no direct investment into social and affordable housing or public housing, and $16.8 billion for wealthy property speculators.

This is a budget and, ultimately, this is a parliament that is just saying to people who are being marginalised and ground into poverty: 'Tough luck. Tough luck about your HECS debt. You should've gone to uni in the seventies and eighties when people in this place had the opportunity to go to uni and get a free university degree.' This budget says to people: 'Tough luck if you can't make ends meet. Tough luck if they ignore you. Tough luck if you want to hand over a sustainable climate and a functioning ecosystem to your children and your grandchildren so that they can have access to the same opportunities that we all had. Tough luck to you, because we're going to keep publicly subsidising burning fossil fuels.'

I'll tell you what: poor people in this country, young people in this country, people who believe in a functioning climate and a functioning ecosystem on this planet that ultimately supports everyone's life, we are fuming right now, and rightly so. Those people—and I am one of them—have every right to be angry, because we are collectively victims of daylight robbery by the people that we collectively elected to represent us. This is a Labor government. If only we had a progressive government in this country, rather than a government and a Prime Minister that daily are earning the reputation of being timid.