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

I think it would be helpful for folk in this chamber and folk listening to this debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024 and the associated bill to understand how we've come to find ourselves here today. The Morrison government, prior to the last election, brought forward a massive package of tax cuts—including stage 3, which would have seen politicians, CEOs and billionaires get a $9,000-a-year tax cut when people on the minimum wage would have received absolutely nothing. It was $9,000 a year for the CEOs and the politicians, and if you are on the minimum wage, under stage 3, as originally cast by Mr Morrison, you would have received absolutely nothing. And what happened when that legislation came into this place? The Labor Party voted for it. The Labor Party made it law. Make no mistake: if the Labor Party had joined the Greens in opposing those tax cuts, they would not have become law. So the only reason those tax cuts—which gave CEOs and politicians an extra $9,000 a year in their pockets and gave people on the minimum wage absolutely nothing, not a red cent if you are on minimum wage—became law was the Labor Party decided to vote for them. That was a stark reminder of the lack of political courage that is embodied in the modern Labor Party.

Then we had an election, and, despite a significant erosion in its primary vote, Labor fell over the line with enough seats to form a government in the House of Representatives. Then, after repeatedly telling Australians that there were no plans to change the stage 3 tax cuts, Mr Albanese and Mr Chalmers, at the start of this year, revealed that they were planning to change the stage 3 tax cuts—and rightly so, in the view of the Greens, because those tax cuts were never a good idea and should never have been supported by the Labor Party in the first place. Having made the decision to change and recast Mr Morrison's stage 3 tax cuts, which then became Mr Albanese's stage 3 tax cuts, did Labor actually recast them to make our tax system more progressive, as you would expect the Labor Party to do? No, they did not. What they did was recast them to make them slightly less regressive than the massively regressive stage 3 tax cuts that were originally designed by people like Mr Morrison and former senator Cormann.

It beggars belief that this is where we find ourselves today. Today Labor is choosing to give people on over $200,000 a year a $4,500-a-year tax cut, and today Labor is also choosing to give people on income support absolutely nothing. This is how far the modern Labor Party has fallen. This is how far out of sight and out of mind people on income support are for the modern Labor Party. There are Australians who are literally starving because they cannot afford to eat. There are Australians who are homeless because they cannot afford to rent.

And what does the Labor Party do? Instead of looking after these people and raising the woefully inadequate level of income support, the Labor Party has chosen to give politicians and CEOs a $4½-thousand-a-year tax cut. That is the modern Labor Party for you, folks: $320 billion of tax cuts over the next decade, when Labor is claiming it can't afford to put dental into Medicare, that it can't afford to forgive student debt, that it can't afford to make child care more affordable and that it can't afford to raise income support. Labor can't afford to do those things because it has chosen to spend $320 billion on tax cuts, the largest of which go to the highest income earners in this country.

You could put mental health and dental health into Medicare for a third of $320 billion. You could wipe student debt many times over. You could make child care free many times over. You could put billions of dollars into building affordable homes for people to live in—into social and public housing. You could make public transport free. You could put in fast rail between Australia's cities. You could build the renewable energy infrastructure and the storage capacity that we need in order to get to net zero by 2035. But what does the modern Labor Party decide to do? It decides to implement $320 of tax cuts, to give people on over $200,000 a year a $4½-thousand-a-year tax cut. This is an extraordinary abject surrender by the Australian Labor Party to the manoeuvrings of the Morrison government and the LNP. Folks, this is why the country is in such a mess.

Let me explain to you how this happens. The LNP come into government and they lurch this country to the right. They torture refugees, they demonise migrants and they give tax cuts to the wealthy. They lurch this country to the right, and Labor acquiesces to every one of these things, because they are too gutless to stand up and fight for what is right in this country. They leave that to the Greens, and we oppose these things every step of the way. Then when Labor gets into government they move us back about two per cent of the way that the Liberal Party took us, because Labor is too gutless to move this country to where it needs to go. They are too gutless to make the corporations pay their fair share of tax. They're too gutless to put a wealth tax on in this country. They are too gutless to walk away from the $370 billion of the AUKUS submarines. They are too gutless to reverse Mr Morrison's stage 3 tax cuts. And so it goes.

The government in this country is being swapped by a right-wing extremist party in the form of the LNP and a centre-right party in the form of the ALP. That is why this country keeps on lurching to the right. That is why Australians are literally starving on income support. That is why we have a six-figure number of Australians who are homeless, who can't afford to rent a place to live. The neoliberal brainworms have infected both major parties.

It is absolutely critical that we take a stand here today and we make the big corporations and the superwealthy pay their fair share of tax so that we can actually help people with things that matter in their day-to-day lives—like putting dental into Medicare. Last time I looked, your mouth was part of your body. It is extraordinary that we've just had a celebration of an anniversary of Medicare by the Labor Party, and yet, rather than celebrating the anniversary of Medicare by doing something to make it stronger, all we got was the bells and whistles. They could put dental into Medicare and they should put dental into Medicare. They should also put mental health into Medicare, because last time I looked someone's mental health was critical to their overall health and wellbeing.

The Labor Party could do so much for so many people in Australia—and 40 or 50 years ago, it would have done those things. But it is a shadow of its former self—a shell of a political party, hollowed out by careerism and neoliberalism to become a pale imitation of the LNP. That is where we find ourselves today, and that is how we find ourselves today debating these changes to the stage 3 tax cuts.

Labor could have actually used the opportunity of changing its position. That's something they should have done—and something the Greens were calling on them to do, I hasten to add. They should have used that opportunity to make our income tax system more progressive or to do some of these other things that would actually help people, including raising income support. The fact that they didn't again shows a lack of vision and a lack of political courage. The Australian Greens are the only people in this parliament who opposed Mr Morrison's tax cuts from day one. Those tax cuts were supported by many in this place, and, once the Labor Party indicated its support for them, as I said earlier, they became law.

Now, I do want to say one other thing about how we find ourselves here. The Greens kept the pressure on Labor. Millions of Australians kept the pressure on Labor. And finally Labor accepted that it needed to make some changes. When the Greens went to the election, we said, 'Give us the balance of power and we will push the next government to go further and faster on a range of things, including addressing economic inequality in this country.' And we have delivered that, repeatedly, in this term of government. We delivered it on climate. We delivered it on the stage 3 tax cuts. Make no mistake: Labor would not have shifted if it hadn't been for the campaigning of the Greens and millions of Australians who rely on us and who join us to build a movement to make this country a fairer place.

That work has a long, long way to go. We need to make the big corporations pay their fair share of tax so that more Australians can lead a life of dignity and wellbeing. We need to make the superwealthy pay their fair share of tax so more Australians can live a life of dignity and wellbeing.

The government can never claim that it can't afford to put dental and mental health into Medicare, or make child care more affordable, or wipe student debt or raise income support, because they could have afforded to do those things if they had only chosen not to proceed with the stage 3 tax cuts. They could have recast these tax cuts to ensure that no-one earning an income of over $200,000 a year got a tax break and that, instead, more was done to help people on the minimum wage and on income support. It is an absolute travesty that Labor chose not to do any of those things and instead give a $4½ thousand a year tax cut to corporate CEOs, billionaires and politicians. That is how far the modern Labor Party has fallen.

I foreshadow my second reading amendment as circulated in the chamber.