Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I speak today on the stage 3 tax cut bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024, and the related bill. There are many parts of the world where people are willing to pay higher taxes—particularly income taxes—than we do in Australia. Think about that; there are parts of the world where people are willing to pay more and higher taxes than we do in Australia because they actually trust that the government will spend those funds in a way that benefits the majority—housing, education, health care. There are many examples of these countries—Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark. These are all nations with a higher level of income tax than we have in Australia. They are also all countries that beat Australia in last year's world happiness index.

We have a broken tax system in Australia. Year after year the government fails to spend public funds appropriately. And the result of this broken tax system is that our world-class health system is now pushed to the brink. We have a rental and housing crisis—the worst it has been in generations. Our education system leaves more and more kids behind every single year. And we have a cost-of-living crisis that means that a block of cheese now costs more than a Macca's meal. Just think about how broken that is.

The stage 3 tax cut bill as originally proposed by the Morrison government did the opposite of benefiting the majority. It benefited a tiny minority of high-income earners, most of whom were pulling in $180,000 a year. As someone who would have benefited from the original plan, we should have never, ever been the focus of that legislation. We should not have been the priority. Odds are we would have been more than fine without it. The relief that this government didn't proceed with that plan is palpable. It would have been ridiculous and devastating in terms of its consequences, and that's why the Greens will be supporting Labor's amendment.

But it must not be the last that is seen of this government's supposed generosity. The reality right now is that Australians are being hit from all sides by this cost-of-living crisis. The median income in Australia is around $67,000 annually. For folks on this wage, these changes mean that they may take home about $50 extra a fortnight. In most states, the reality is that is not enough to cover the average cost of the gap payment when you see the GP. In most states—or anywhere in this country right now, let's be honest—$50 a fortnight will not cover your grocery shop. It is not going to get you much closer to covering your monthly or weekly rent. Let's be really clear: the average rental payment in Australia right now is $580 a week. And with Australia's median property value being $750,000 as of last December, if you put this extra money away towards saving up a 20 per cent deposit for a mortgage, to try to buy that home, it would take you roughly 116 years to build up the amount of money to do it.

In this reality, the government says, 'Well, maybe you can put this money aside in a savings account, with a fairly generous four per cent interest rate.' In that scenario, if you did that, if you were the kind of good little saver that the government often suggests people experiencing poverty should be—and let me share from personal experience.

As somebody whose family has always struggled, there is nothing more infuriating, when you are in a position trying to figure out where next week's shop money is going to come from, how you're going to make things work on the DSP and how you're going to cover your specialist medical bills, than to feel that you're being told by people in positions of power that you are experiencing that because you are not as good as you should be at saving. Let's have a look at what that would do if you put that money away in a savings account. It would take you 45 years to build up that 20 per cent deposit. In this context, I do not blame the Australian community for not trusting either side of politics with their money. In a cost-of-living crisis, both sides of politics have left them out in the cold—or more accurately, if you're from Western Australia, in the scorching heat.

These amendments to the stage 3 tax cuts bill are a start, a tiny step in the direction towards actually providing people with the support they need. But Labor must take bolder actions to level the playing field and provide tangible supports and improvements to people's lives. They must listen to the Greens and the community's call for a raise to the disability support pension that allows disabled people to live beyond poverty. They must listen to the Greens and the community's call to bring dental care and mental health care fully into Medicare and to actually tax the billionaires so that the Gina Rineharts and the Twiggy Forrests and corporations like Woodside actually pay their fair share of tax. Without taking such actions, it is hard to interpret this bill as little more than a hollow gesture.