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

Millions of Australians are getting smashed by high inflation and high interest rates. They can't pay their rents, they can't pay their mortgages, they can't put food on the table and they can't pay their power bills. But do you know who loves the current economic climate? Big corporations. The share of the national economy going to wages has never been lower, and the share of the national economy going to profits has never been higher. Big corporations are profiting obscenely at the moment, and millions of Australians are getting price gouged by those big corporations.

And what is the Labor Party, which is in government, doing about it? Absolutely nothing. It's refusing to implement strong competition laws. It's refusing to make price gouging illegal. It's refusing to introduce laws that would allow us to bust-up the supermarket duopoly and end the price gouging on food and groceries. It even refused to properly tax those corporations that are making obscene profits. One in three of the biggest corporations in this country pay no tax whatsoever. What does that mean? It means ordinary, everyday Australians are being left behind because the big corporates have got their hooks into the political establishment parties in this parliament.