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

This is a budget handed down while the planet's climate is breaking down around us, while ecological collapse is underway and while many millions of Australians are being price-gouged by supermarkets and are facing skyrocketing rents. These are issues that demand serious government intervention. They demand action. They demand real, strong and urgent action.

That is not what we got from the Labor Party last night. This budget locks in economic inequality, and it exacerbates the breakdown of our climate and the collapse of ecosystems. Everyone understands that property developers and property speculators are driving up property prices and rents. Everybody understands that the supermarket duopoly are hiking prices to line their pockets and inflate their profits. Everyone understands that the gas cartel is profiting from the destruction of the planet's ecosystems and climate. But Labor has chosen to do nothing to rein in those corporate interests, and, of course, that is because Labor takes massive political donations from those same corporate interests.

Labor talks a big talk about the pain people are feeling at the supermarket checkout. Yet Labor's budget last night did not make price-gouging illegal. It did not introduce divestiture powers. It contained not one new measure and not one new dollar to put downward pressure on food and grocery prices.

Labor claims to understand the pain that renters are facing, and yet the budget last night did not freeze or cap rents. Instead, it committed tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks to property speculators.

Labor says it loves renewables, but actually Labor loves coal and gas. There was almost $50 billion worth of direct subsidies in the budget last night to encourage burning fossil fuels, and Labor has released a plan written by the gas cartel to make Australia reliant on gas expansion well beyond 2050. The budget also shows the danger of letting fossil fuel corporations write their own tax laws, because it shows that revenue from the PRRT is continuing to plummet, with $4.5 billion in writedowns on PRRT revenues in this budget and the last.

This budget should have contained action. It contains nothing of the kind.