Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before starting, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which are meeting and pay my respects to Ngunawal and Ngambri elders past, present and future. I think it is particularly important that I acknowledge Aboriginal ownership of the land on which we are meeting. It is not only important that we acknowledge their ownership but also addressing the issues of disadvantage and closing gap have to be at the centre of policy development and policy implementation in this country.

The Governor-General said something very important at the start of his speech yesterday. He said:

Electorates across the country have vested in you their trust to deal sensibly, responsibly and diligently with a multitude of policy choices important not only to how Australians live today but to what sort of society we bequeath to future generations.

He went on to say:

… my government will work constructively, cooperatively and creatively with each member and senator to focus on policy that improves the wellbeing, and secures the future, of all Australians, their families and their communities.

The Australian Greens take that responsibility very seriously. We know that Australia faces challenges over the course of the 21st century. The choices we make as a country mean a lot to the community and will have far-reaching consequences, which is why I have to say I was disappointed in many of the points that were made yesterday about the direction that the government intends to take.

The choices that were outlined in the speech seemed to rely more on trickle-down economics that in fact do not work and do not float all those boats. The evidence shows that in Western Australia—for example, through the boom—there was no such thing as trickle-down economics. The approaches that have been outlined by the government cut funding, support and programs to some of the poorest and most disadvantaged members of our community and seek to give money to the rich, banking yet again on the flawed approach of trickle-down economics.

We believe we can and must choose a different approach that cares for the most vulnerable, that works for social justice and that acknowledges that we need to be making choices that invest in programs that support the most vulnerable in our community. How as a nation we choose to respond will mean the difference between having a fair, equal and caring society or a society that is increasingly unequal. So when it comes to improving the wellbeing and the future for all, we agree: this is essential. We disagree on the method. We know the impact of inequality, on health outcomes and productivity. Even the IMF acknowledges that inequality is harmful to productivity. So, if in fact people do not care about the wellbeing and fairness in our community, which we Greens do, and believe that the way to achieving fairness and equality is increased productivity, and even if they do believe in the trickle-down effect, inequality means that productivity will be harmed. So we in fact disagree with some of the measures that were outlined yesterday.

The Governor-General spoke about supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and said:

The commitment to do things with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, rather than doing things to communities, remains steadfast.

The Australian Greens believe that this commitment is incredibly important. I only wish that the coalition's approach matched their rhetoric. Not long before that in that speech were comments around the government's approach to the healthy welfare card—that is not working with communities. It is a top-down, paternalistic harmful policy.

We have seen the Northern Territory intervention, which was then followed up by the ALP's Stronger Futures policy, entrenching income management. We have seen reports that show that income management has failed, that it is top-down, paternalistic and did not achieve any of its objectives. Again, it is not working with communities.

The Community Development Program is not working with communities. It is imposing, yet again, a punitive, destructive, paternalistic and discriminatory approach to policies, because the programs that apply there do not apply to the rest of Australia. So it simply is not working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians—it is doing things with them rather than to them. It is simply not doing it.

The healthy welfare card is a policy that is being imposed on communities. The only reason the government is not seeking to impose it in Geraldton is because, fortunately, the federal election got in the way. It is not very popular, and the government did not do the consultation in that community; we, the Greens, did the consultation in that community and Aboriginal organisations did the consultation in the Geraldton community. Quite clearly, it was opposed by the community, and Aboriginal organisations in Geraldton have come out very strongly and rejected a healthy welfare card. The broader community at the public meeting we had clearly rejected the healthy welfare card. That is not working with the community; it is doing things to the community.

So are programs like the Community Development Program. It is punitive and harmful. Clearly already the harm is being felt in communities with the government's approach to the Community Development Program, because we have seen nearly 50,000 extra sanctions through that process in Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal people in communities talk to me about not being able to get back on once they are sanctioned off and about the system purposely being made so complex as to stop people going back onto income support. It is not helping develop employment in the communities.

I will acknowledge that the government has now said that it will extend funding to the Indigenous Rangers program, the program that has been evaluated and shown really clearly to have benefits to employment, to health and to land management—an overwhelmingly positive response. I am glad to see that the government has now at least said it will extend funding to 2020. Unfortunately, there are very strong rumours—more than rumours, because I know that there is an overhead presentation circulating that shows—that the government wants to change it and wants to make it an employment program like the CDP. So here we have a program which works, which the government wants to come along and fiddle with to reduce its effectiveness, when the community is asking for a doubling of funding and for the ensuring of certainty for 15 years. That is a position that the Greens strongly support.

The Greens have a different vision from the government's vision in this area. To the 2016 election we took a platform of supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We want to work with Aboriginal communities. We have listened to Aboriginal communities, Aboriginal peak organisations and Aboriginal community organisations. We want to make sure that the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, the representative body of first peoples, is properly funded and can do its work representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We want to re-form the Indigenous Advancement Strategy because that has been chaotic. You cannot go anywhere in any communities without hearing concern about the flawed approach in the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. We want to restore the funding of over half a billion dollars that was taken out of Aboriginal programs. We want to see genuine consultation that supports Aboriginal communities, and we want to genuinely work with Aboriginal communities, not do things to Aboriginal communities.

There is an inherent contradiction in the government's approach when they are talking about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues, because, on one hand, they are supposed to be talking to and working with Aboriginal communities; at the same time, they are imposing top down, punitive approaches. We will continue to oppose programs that are punitive, that are harsh and that are imposed top down. We want to get rid of the contradiction, within government policy, that they want to, on one hand, work with and, on the other hand, do to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The same goes for justice targets. In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, peak bodies and people in communities have been crying out for justice targets to address the appalling incarceration rates in this country, but that takes genuine reform, genuine change and, again, working with communities, not continuing to support the states and territories that apply mandatory detention and not seeing states and territories put in place punitive approaches instead of working for justice reinvestment. I would have liked to have seen a more supportive approach to justice reinvestment, for example. All these measures have been worked on and promoted by Aboriginal communities. Please listen and work with Aboriginal communities to address these issues.

One of our central pillars for the Australian Greens is social justice. We are deeply concerned about poverty in this country. We are deeply concerned about the government's agenda on what they call welfare—we call it our social security system—with the constant claims that the numbers are rising and that we have to keep cutting income support. We have a flawed approach to income support in this country if the government think they can fix things by just continuing to cut funding—the energy supplement, for example. If you are living in poverty on Newstart, every dollar counts. Taking away the energy supplement basically cuts Newstart, plunging people further into poverty.

The government want to continue their policy of chucking people off the disability support pension and dumping people with disability onto Newstart. That does not increase the wellbeing of our community. It is punitive. It is mean. And it is self-defeating because people living in poverty find it even harder to find work.

This takes us back to the issue that this country is always proud of its approach of a fair go. That is not a fair go. People should not be limited in a fair Australia by where they are born or how much their parents earn or the colour of their skin. We believe that everybody has the right to access adequate resources to allow them to fully participate in society. Australians as a country believe that fairness is an important issue. We have staked our reputation on fairness. But the approach that the government outlined in the address yesterday is not fair. We believe that people should be given and deserve a fair chance. We talk about mateship. We are quite proud of that. That is about helping one another. That is what we used to define mateship as and see mateship as: helping one another. We do not believe that that is the approach that the address outlined yesterday.

We know that in Australia today not everybody gets a fair go. The Prime Minister said it himself. He said:

I don’t believe my wealth, or frankly most people’s wealth, is entirely a function of hard work. Of course hard work is important but, you know, there are taxi drivers that work harder than I ever have and they don’t have much money. There are cleaners that worked harder than I ever have or you ever have and they don’t have much money.

That is an acknowledgement by the Prime Minister that we do not have an equal society and this is where the coalition's policy falls down, because its policies do not deliver a fairer or more equal society. We need a social security system that is fit for the 21st century. Instead of that, the government is continuing to talk about cuts to our income support system, is ripping big holes in our social security net and is making the most vulnerable members of our community pay for the largesse of the coalition. It was the coalition that introduced tax cuts, that introduced payments for those that are doing very well thank you very much. The coalition thinks it can put in place more tax cuts and all of a sudden they are going to trickle down and help the most vulnerable members of our community. That is in fact not proven in economic analysis. Inequality is going to damage our community. We know, from the social determinants of health, that people will end up less healthy thereby making it even harder for them to participate in the workforce.

We are not envisaging an economy that is fit for the 21st century. Just the same, we do not have a social services system that is fit for the 21st century. But instead of a vision of how we are going to develop a social services system, of how we are going to develop an economy that is fit, that addresses renewable energies and that ensures we are in fact the clever country, we are taking money out of ARENA when that should be a key investment because that is the future. That is where the future jobs are.

People are often lucky because of where they were born, in which community they were born into, in which postcard their parents lived in. That was demonstrated again and again by the Dropping Off the Edge: Persistent Communal Disadvantage in Australia report from the Jesuit Social Services and Catholic Social Services Australia. Dropping Off the Edge clearly articulates that where you were born and what postcode you live in can determine your future outcomes. That is not an Australia that we should be proud of. We should make sure we are helping people in those postcodes and making sure that we are not increasing inequality in our society.

I chaired the Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into the extent of income inequality in Australia last year. The committee heard significant evidence about the impact of inequality, about measures to address it and about how we need to be addressing unemployment of our young and our older Australians, who are dropping out of employment and not able to regain it. We have a job service system that is failing the unemployed, that is failing people who are not able to access work. There is increasing homelessness, and a failing of many people to be to get access to services in the places they live.

We would put in place a series of measures to address this inequality, to make sure we are building a strong social safety net, to make sure we do have universal access to social services—social services that we can be proud of. We would build a strong health system and education system in this country to ensure inequality is addressed, to ensure for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples that we can meet the promises we made to close the gap by 2030. As Senator Di Natale outlined earlier this morning, we are not on track to meet the Closing the Gap targets that we currently have and we are not putting in place the justice targets that we need such as the ones we outlined.

Where is the vision where we move to an economy based on the 100 per cent renewable energy? We know we can do it. As they say, we have the technology. We can rebuild our energy system to be 100 per cent renewable. Where was the outline and the vision for that? Nowhere, of course, because the government is so beholden to fossil fuels and to the dinosaurs that cling on to coal. The government lacks the vision to make sure we move there. The government will be responsible when places like Collie in Western Australia are left to die because the government did not have the foresight to put in place those transformational plans. There was no vision in that statement. We need to have a vision in this country and that statement failed.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank his Excellency the Governor-General of Australia for the speech he delivered yesterday, which sets out a wonderful and exciting future for our country over the next three years. I congratulate the Prime Minister, the honourable Malcolm Turnbull, on his election as Prime Minister and on leading the coalition to victory at the election on 2 July. It was not the convincing victory we had hoped for but a victory is a victory and I congratulate the Prime Minister. I know that in the next three years he will lead Australia to bigger and better things.

I also thank the people of Queensland for returning me as a senator representing that state for the sixth time. I commit myself to work as hard as I can in their interests over the term of the next parliament. It is clear that, as the longest serving parliamentarian now, I am of an age where many people will say to me, 'You are now at an age where you should be thinking about retiring.' Of course, age of itself is not the criteria. I think that older people everywhere in Australia are undervalued. As long as older people can do the work, can commit to the goals they set and the achievements that they espouse, then age should not be a barrier. And for as long as I can continue to do the work that I have been doing for the last 26 years, I will do that with the help of my fellow Queenslanders and in their interests.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the new members of the Liberal-National Party of Queensland, the LNP, who have come to this chamber following the election. I specifically mention the new members for Groom, Maranoa, Brisbane, Fairfax, Fisher and Wide Bay. I should also mention in that election context the wonderful result achieved by the members for Petrie, Brisbane and Capricornia, all of whom, according to the commentariat, were going to lose their seats in the 2 July election. All of them did remarkably well. I add to that the member for Flynn, who, after being written off by the commentariat, had quite a comfortable win in his electorate.

I pay my highest regards and respect to Mr Wyatt Roy and Mr Ewen Jones who, at this stage, have lost their seats. Mr Wyatt Roy is a wonderful young person, and I am confident he will be back in public life in the future. As for my friend and colleague Ewen Jones in Herbert, I might say that this is still work in progress. I would hope to see a challenge to the Court of Disputed Returns as I am confident that it would lead to a return of Mr Jones to the other place. I also pay tribute to former senator Jo Lindgren, who, in the short time she was in this chamber, did a wonderful job and became a very close friend of mine. Again, she is the sort of person who has so much to contribute, and I am confident that she will return to public life at some time in the future. I must say that the election campaign and how it was discharged from the coalition's point of view was not as I would have hoped. There were a lot of problems with it, as I saw it, but I do acknowledge the difficulty that the LNP in Queensland had in running a campaign at the instruction of someone else while having to deal with particular local issues.

I highlight my pride at being a member of the coalition and being a member of the LNP, which is the second of the three parties which comprise the federal coalition. There are three parties in the federal coalition: the Liberal Party, which has 45 members in the lower house; the LNP, which has 21 members in the lower house; and the National Party, which has 10 members in the lower house—a total of 76 in the coalition. If you add to that 30 senators, you have a coalition of 106 members and senators of which 27 come from the LNP, making it clearly the second biggest party in the federal coalition. Compare this, of course, with my friends and colleagues from Victoria, who only have 22 senators and members in the coalition in this parliament. My congratulations go to Gary Spence and the executive of the LNP in Queensland on leading the party to quite a remarkable result—a result which, I might say, has been achieved in the last several elections, as the Queensland LNP always punches well above its weight when it comes to returning a coalition government.

The election that just passed was remarkable for a couple of reasons. The Mediscare campaign, which had a real impact in Queensland, was one of the most disgraceful campaigning programs that I have ever seen in my long involvement with politics. Southern unionists who were there supporting the Labor Party at the pre-polls at the two Townsville booths were actively telling lies, particularly to older people and more vulnerable people. They were saying to them, 'Medicare will disappear tomorrow'—a complete, abject and outright lie. But it was being promoted by members of the MUA, who were up there in Townsville supporting Glenn Lazarus's candidate in his campaign, would you believe? The MUA! They interspersed with the Labor candidate. One day they would be wearing a Lazarus shirt; the next day they would be wearing a Labor Party shirt. But they from the MUA joined with people from the CPSU and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union—all out-of-towners, I might say—in harassing people in the long queues that occurred in the pre-polls, particularly in Kirwan and Townsville City. That was a blight on democracy.

The Australian Electoral Commission have a difficult job, but I have to say—and I will be speaking a lot more about this as I put myself on the electoral matters standing committee for the review into the recent election—I have a very low regard for the professionalism of the AEC. As I said, I will elaborate on this at some later time when I have a bit more time to elaborate. Because of the close count in Herbert that I was involved in, I think, for 25 days solid from 9 am until 9 pm on Saturdays, Sundays and every other day, you actually look very closely at how the election was conducted. And because it was such an intense scrutiny, you become aware of many things which would make you uncomfortable as to the security of our electoral system. These matters, I hope, will be ventilated in the court at some later time. If not, they will certainly be ventilated in the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. It is a concern which normally would not matter, but, in an election as close as it was in Herbert, you want to understand and look at all of these voting irregularities that can make a difference. You only need to make a difference in three or four seats—at the last election—and you change the government of Australia, and very often it is a change that is not what is intended by the voters of Australia.

The other interesting thing—and it relates a bit to the previous speech—was the remarkably poor result achieved by the Australian Greens in Queensland at the last election. Senator Waters struggled to get a quota. Whilst there was a lot of talk about the Greens getting two quotas in the Senate, they barely were able to get one quota. Their result, particularly in the North, which is where I come from, was the worst I have seen for some time. Indeed, right throughout Queensland the result obtained by the Greens political party candidates in the lower house was, I think, towards some of the worst they have achieved.

I think that is not because of the leadership—and I quite like Senator Di Natale; I think he has rather a refreshing insight—but because people are waking up to the tactics of the radical green movement and their political representatives with regard to a lot of things which Queenslanders hold dear. They see the Greens, the Wilderness Society and the ACF continuing to try and stop what most Queenslanders support. I think that is eventually starting to come through. The rubbish that the Greens will give you on the Coral Sea—I mean, who is asking for anything to be done to the Coral Sea? Who uses the Coral Sea? No-one. And yet the Greens, for some reason, seem to want to lock it up, when it is hardly being used by anyone at all, and what use there is of the Coral Sea has very minimal impact on that pristine environment, which has always been pristine and which will stay pristine.

The count in Herbert, as I said, was long and exhausting. Hopefully, from my point of view—and I emphasise here that these are not decisions for me to make; they are entirely beyond any control I would have, but I personally hope—there will a challenge to the Court of Disputed Returns. I would then look forward to a new election in that seat.

Returning to the Governor-General's speech: it succinctly set out a wonderful program for the next three years, starting with tax cuts. My speech follows that of Senator Siewert. She is a lovely person, Senator Siewert—I admire her a lot—but she is the ultimate socialist, as are many of the people in the Greens political party. They have only got to look at history to see that socialism does not work. You have got to encourage people. You have got to look after those who cannot look after themselves; you have got to look after the disadvantaged; but you do that by having a progressive, wealthy country, and you increase wealth by encouraging people to work harder. I am delighted the Governor-General highlighted the tax cuts which will result from the coalition's election win.

I refer also to a matter of very great interest to me and others who live in the North, and that is the record expenditure on defence that this government has committed to. Over the next decade, something like $195 billion will be spent on defence capability. I am delighted also to note that, in the defence white paper, some $12.4 billion of the defence spending in the intermediate future will be spent in the North of Australia.

I note from the Governor-General's speech that the coalition is continuing with its exceedingly remarkable successes in the area of free trade agreements, which means jobs for Australians. It means greater exports for Australians and therefore jobs and wealth for our country. I am delighted that the government will be pursuing success in Japan, Korea, China and Singapore and with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will be particularly important to the cattle and sugar industries in the North of Australia.

The NBN is being rolled out. In fact, it is almost at my home in Ayr, as I speak. Under the Conroy program for the NBN, I might have got NBN in five or six years, if I were still alive. But thanks to the administration of Senator Fifield and, before him, Mr Turnbull the NBN is knocking on my door.

There is $50 billion in investment in infrastructure to connect goods and markets, to connect rural people and industries to neighbouring regional cities, state capitals and international markets, to support local industries and to get us safely home. I have got to mention the enormous work being done on the Bruce Highway. Every time I drive from my home in Ayr to my office in Townsville, I get annoyed by the amount of roadworks on the Bruce Highway, where they are converting it into passing lanes. It is a wonderful effort. As well as that, there is the eastern rail corridor extension in Townsville, which will be so beneficial for all industries in the North. I give great credit to Mr Ewen Jones for his advocacy of that. The City Deals program is an innovative new program that will in Townsville's case—parochially, can I say—result in a new stadium there but as part of a wider arrangement on City Deals. Again all congratulations to Ewen Jones on that, and on the Smart Cities Plan, which Mr Jones was very much involved in.

During the election campaign, significant announcements were made in relation to water storage and management. It is 30 or 40 years since there has been a dam in Australia—there was one small one in Tasmania under the last coalition government—but we have now removed the word 'dam' from the swear list of public policy and we will be seeing new dams, water storage and weirs on rivers in the north. Of course, the Rookwood Weir near Rockhampton will be the first one off the starting blocks.

We will continue to care for the environment. The Great Barrier Reef has been well managed and cared for under successive coalition governments. I have to say for the benefit of Senator Siewert and Senator Waters that even conversation societies acknowledge that all positive forward-looking policies on protection of our natural marine assets come from coalition governments. There is more money for reform to research funding. I am delighted that the Northern Australian CRC will take off during the term of this next government. In health, the coalition has a proud story to tell, whereas all the Labor Party can tell are outright and abject lies about Medicare—a disgrace and a blot on the Australian Labor Party and our democracy.

In his speech, the Governor-General clearly indicated a path forward for a nation like Australia as we take the best of our natural assets and our people assets to build a better, happier and wealthier community for all. That, I think, will mean a very exciting time for all of us.

I urge members of the Labor Party, in particular, to think not of their own selfish, inward-looking personal political ambitions or egos but to think of Australia's interests in the way they address matters coming before this chamber. A lot of programs that are coming into this chamber are matters which the Labor Party called for and supported in the run-up to the election. I hope the Labor Party will allow those to be implemented to get the budget a little bit back on track, which is a goal of our government and a goal that is so essential for all Australians. I notice that at the Australian War Memorial the other day Mr Shorten made a call for his party and for all Australians—the government as well—to act in the national interest. I will be reminding Mr Shorten what he said as we debate in the next few weeks these initiatives which were set out by the Governor-General in his speech to the parliament. I commend the speech. (Time expired)

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by reflecting on what a great privilege it is to be re-elected to the Senate and to be back here representing the people of Victoria. I really do want to thank the voters of Victoria who have given me the privilege to be here representing them. I am going to do my best in this term of parliament to work hard for all Victorians, for all Australians, and for all the other species that we share our planet with and for all the people of the future as well, and to not just focus on what can be quite short-term interests of small sections of the community.

In thinking about the Governor-General's speech and reflecting on what I wanted to say tonight, my first thought was that I really felt for the Governor-General. He was required to read out a speech that was written by government ideologues which was, frankly, rather uninspiring. It was full of platitudes, nice sounding words, but nothing that really gave you that sense of, 'Yeah, here is a strong agenda with a strong drive and a determination to really knuckle down and do the hard work and really tackle the serious problems that Australia faces'. It was uninspiring and I do not blame anyone in the chamber for falling asleep during it.

Today we have heard a number of speeches in reply saying what a centrepiece for our future the Governor-General's speech was. Senator Brandis, for example, in question time today took the opportunity to repeat that the core theme of Governor-General's speech was that we were building a strong, prosperous and secure Australia. Again, nice sounding, and who would be against having a strong, prosperous and secure Australia? It sounds great. But what was outlined in that speech is not going to deliver a strong, prosperous and secure Australia.

Senator Brandis today went on to say that 'the heart of the plan is the plan for jobs, growth and investment'. So we have added an extra word. Rather than jobs and growth being a three-word slogan, we now a four-word slogan: jobs, growth and investment. But where is the detail, the crux, of how that is going to be delivered? During the election campaign we heard so much about jobs and growth, but the only bit of the agenda that we really had given to us was that $50 billion worth of tax cuts was going to magically produce great amounts of jobs and growth. It was this belief in the thoroughly discredited economic theory of trickle-down economics—that that was going to transform Australia. We have had 50 years of trickle-down economics, of neoliberal economics, and we have more than enough evidence to show that it does not work—$50 billion worth of tax cuts is not going to deliver jobs and growth and investment and it is not going to deliver a strong, prosperous and secure Australia.

But at the heart of what the government is talking about is that we need to have a balanced budget. On the need for a balanced budget, of not living beyond our needs for the everyday operational expenses of running the government, we can agree. Yes, we need to not be living beyond our needs. It would of course be refreshing and constructive if the government were equally concerned about government debt and the massive private debt that is amassing in this country and, in particular, recognised the difference between debt being taken on for the day-to-day and the year-to-year expenses of running the country and the debt which is from borrowing money for productive infrastructure, to invest in infrastructure that will have lasting value, and to improve our economic efficiency, which has lasting social benefit and lasting benefit in reducing our environmental footprint. We need to be able to differentiate between these two types of debt. In fact, in the Greens' election platform we did that and said, 'Look, it has been supported by economists around the world that there is such value in borrowing to invest in that infrastructure and being able to deliver the type of Australia that we want to be living in.'

If we get back to tackling the balance sheet, keeping our budget in check and balancing our day-to-day, year-to-year budget: accepting that as something that you want to do, there are very different ways of going about it. In the Greens, we say we do not balance the budget by cutting services and cutting benefits from those who can least afford to pay or by increasing the taxes on those who can least afford to pay, such as the prospect of increasing the GST that was being put around. We know that increasing the GST will impact on the people with the least amount of money in our society, who spend every dollar they have and pay GST on it. So we can do as the government wants—tackle balancing our budget by attacking those with the least in our society—or we can ask those who can afford to pay their fair share to do so, actually implement progressive taxation and get rid of the tax breaks that are currently enjoyed at the big end of town. Yet again, this is not the direction that the government is heading in. It really shows, once again, that this government simply does not get the idea of fairness.

You would think that after everything we went through in the 2014 budget—after all the backlash and the rejection from experts, economists, the community and this Senate—the government would try something different. But, no, their new progressive, innovative, forward-looking agenda is to try again with the same unfair measures. Senator Cormann now has a new cigar buddy in Treasurer Morrison. Joe Hockey might have taken one for the nation—sent to the other side of the world—but the government seem to want to have another go. It is not lifters and leaners now but the taxed and the taxed-nots, which is an atrocious, even worse metaphor than the first. It is now completely clear who the government are governing for. The government are here to make life easier for the haves and harder for the have-nots.

Yes, we need to have a balanced budget, but we are not going to get there by targeting those who can least afford it, and we are definitely not going to get there with tax cuts for massive corporations. The Greens know that we have to tackle our revenue problem. We have to be raising revenue rather than going on cutting splurges for the big end of town. We took to the election a vision to raise revenue with a whole range of measures that would give us the revenue to spend on the initiatives that we know this country needs. In fact, over the forward estimates, we put together a list of revenue measures that came in at over $100 billion, and these were revenue measures that would deliver us a fairer, more equitable and more sustainable society.

I have the list here of the measures that we took to the election. Ending fossil fuel subsidies is a big one. If we ended those fossil fuel subsidies and the mining companies had to pay the same tax on their petrol as you and I need to, it would raise $24 billion over the next four years. That is $24 billion that we could do an awful lot with. I can think of a huge number of projects that we could be spending $24 billion on—whether increasing equality, increasing Newstart or investing in public transport infrastructure; $24 billion is not to be sneezed at.

We suggested amendments to make our superannuation system much fairer with progressive superannuation taxation, so that rather than people paying very little tax as they put money into their super, virtually everybody would receive a 15 per cent concession on the tax they had to pay on contributions. So if your marginal tax rate was 47 per cent, then you would pay 32 per cent on your super contributions. It seems pretty fair that if you can afford to put that amount of money in super then you can afford to pay a progressive rate of tax on it. These sorts of changes to our superannuation system would raise $10 billion over the next four years. These are not small amounts of money.

We also suggested introducing a 'too big to fail' bank levy. We know that the big four banks can get their money cheaper because everyone knows they have such security and such dominance in the market. If the government, who actually give them that security, actually made them pay for that rather than giving them a discount on what they can get their money for, the revenue passed over to the taxpayer would be almost $15 billion. We also suggested a Buffett rule, which basically says that if you earn over $1 million you need to be paying at least 30 per cent of your income in tax. That seems fair enough to me. If you are earning that much money, you should not be able to use tax avoidance schemes left, right and centre to reduce your tax to next to nothing. Go and ask virtually any Australian if it is fair that if you are earning over $1 million you should be paying at least 30 cents in the dollar—what ordinary people are paying in tax. That measure would raise over $8 billion over the next four years.

The list goes on. Phasing out private health insurance rebates is another measure. This is a massive subsidy to middle- and high-income earners in this country, at the expense of money going into our hospitals so that all of us can benefit from it and we can have a public health system that we can all be really proud of and that we know is going to meet our needs. That measure would save $13 billion.

Then there are the big ones: phasing out negative gearing and phasing out the capital gains tax discounts, which, between the two of them, amount to an extra $30 billion. We have the most generous concessions for property investment anywhere in the world, and they are not delivering the benefits to society that they should. We know that our housing is massively expensive. We know that we have huge issues with lack of affordability in housing and huge issues of homelessness. That $30 billion could be spent in a much more constructive and valuable way.

The platform that we put together said: 'Look, we've got huge problems with unaffordable housing. We've got huge problems of homelessness. How about if we phase out negative gearing and the capital gains tax discounts and invest all of that money into housing programs? Do you know that, if you did that, instead of giving that money to people as a discount on perhaps their fifth, sixth or 10th property, we could end homelessness in Australia?' Think of the transformation we would make to Australia by ending homelessness. And it would have huge economic benefits as well, because of the amount of social housing that would be unlocked through investment in construction of that social and public housing, and because of the huge social value of giving people a safe home, a roof over their head, thus giving them the ability to get on and live productive lives and be able to contribute to society and to the economy. You cannot do that if you are homeless. If you do not know where you are going to be sleeping that night, you cannot get the rest of your life in order. It is a fundamental thing that we should be able to do in Australia. It is a basic human right to have a roof over your head. And it is a choice: we can spend the money on giving discounts to people who have already got a lot, or we can spend the money on making sure that everybody can afford to have a roof over their head.

These are the sorts of measures that the Greens propose to bring to Australia, to restore fairness to the way that we are doing business. These are investments in our future that will reduce inequality.

There are other big investments that are, we know, where money needs to be spent. I have already touched on the need to invest in infrastructure and that we put up a proposal to say, 'As a country with a AAA credit rating, we can afford to borrow $80 billion to invest in productive infrastructure—the infrastructure that we need to transform our cities, particularly the infrastructure that is needed in renewable energy and public and sustainable transport.' If we spent that money, those are the sorts of things that would enable people to travel around our cities efficiently. They would give people the option of fast, frequent, affordable, reliable and safe public transport. We could afford to invest in airport rail in Melbourne. We could afford to invest in cross-city rail in Brisbane. We could afford to invest in light rail systems in all of our capital cities. These would give people the choice to get out of their polluting motor cars. They would tackle fairness, in giving people the opportunity to do that and a clean way of travelling as well—giving them the option of fast, frequent, reliable, affordable and safe public transport.

Of course, the economic benefits of doing that would be immense. We know that we have the opportunity now to have those environmental, economic and employment benefits of that investment in infrastructure. The construction boom from investing in public transport is very substantial.

The other really positive and constructive thing about these city-transforming public transport investments is that we know that, overall, they are not controversial. Everybody agrees that they are what is needed to transform our cities. Instead of focusing on massive, polluting tollways—the benefits of which are going to go to big private companies that are already getting billions of dollars out of us, and which are inevitably going to be controversial—let us focus on the projects which everybody knows are really good ideas.

Airport rail in Melbourne is a classic case in point. We have the absolutely clogged Tullamarine Freeway, where they are currently building an extra lane along each side. We know that, by the time those lanes have been completed, the freeway will be filled up with traffic. It is just a never-ending cycle of continuing waste of billions of dollars. If you put that same level of investment into the public transport project of airport rail, giving people the option of getting to the airport not on the Tullamarine Freeway, that would really transform and unclog our city.

We heard, in the Governor-General's speech, a commitment to inland rail. Again, that is another project of which I think there would be hardly a person across the country who would not say, 'That's a good project.' Let's get on with it! We have government saying, 'All right, yes, it's a good project,' and, so far, there is a commitment to half a billion dollars. Half a billion dollars, I hate to tell the government, is not going to build us the inland rail. The cost of the inland rail is more of the scale of $10 billion. We should be saying, 'Yep, we're going to spend it,' because the benefits to the country of spending it are worth so much. These are the nation-changing infrastructure projects that we need to invest in.

The other critical thing with the infrastructure investments that we need, is that we have to make sure that the decisions that are being made about them and where the money is being invested are in the public interest. In order to ensure that, we need to make sure that we have transparency and accountability as to where that money is being spent. We have a big problem when the infrastructure projects are those market-led proposals, such as the Western Distributor Project proposed by Transurban in Victoria, where, because there is private sector involvement, there is opacity. We have not got transparency. Of the business case, the transport modelling and the economic modelling, serious chunks have been redacted. I got a copy of a freedom of information request about some information about the Western Distributor recently, and, on page after page after page, there were big black squares. So the critical information we need, to know whether that project is in the public interest, is just not available to us. We have to make sure that for any of these infrastructure projects we have transparency and that they are being undertaken in the public interest.

I just want to finish on the final thing which hardly rated a mention in the Prime Minister's speech and which is the most fundamental issue facing us in Australia, and that is the threat of dangerous global warming. We know that unless we tackle global warming it is going to have a massive environmental, social and economic impact on us. We know what we need to do. We know the investment in renewable energy that we could have that would generate tens of thousands of jobs in Australia. They are the directions we need to be going in, tackling the big issues in Australia, and that is the biggest one. We know that if we do not tackle it we do not have much future as a country. Australia can be a global leader. We have the ability. We have the richness of the nation to be able to be a leader in tackling global warming, yet we are being left behind. That is the direction we need to be going in as a country.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to begin tonight with some thankyous, first and foremost to the people of Victoria, who have sent me back here to represent their interests in this place. It is a great honour, and I look forward to fighting hard for your interests in this the states' house. Thank you also to the members of the Victorian Liberal Party, who put their faith in me to represent our wonderful party in the federal parliament. I promised you that I would be a voice for our values. I hope you agree that I have done so in my first six months as a senator, and I recommit to doing so at every opportunity as long as I have your support to be here.

I am particularly proud to be back in the federal parliament as a Victorian Liberal following the federal election. We were the only state to return an extra coalition member of the House of Representatives. Julia Banks will be an outstanding member for the people of Chisholm, and I was very pleased to support her in a small way as her patron senator during the campaign. Her hard work and commitment was recognised by the people of Chisholm, and she and her close-knit campaign team achieved an incredible result of an almost three per cent swing against the trend. Although every coalition member of the House of Representatives could claim to be the key seat that delivered us government, I think Julia Banks has as good a claim as any to being our 76th member. If it were not for her success, we could have all been delivering very different speeches in reply today.

Victoria was also the only state to return an extra coalition senator in the wonderful Jane Hume. We have seen tonight, in her terrific maiden speech, why Jane will be an extremely valuable addition to the team. I want to single out particularly her powerful advocacy of social impact investing and the way in which it can achieve social justice objectives using free-market mechanisms. I am looking forward to serving with her in this place for many years to come.

Victoria can also boast impressive young, energetic new talent with our new Liberal colleagues Chris Crewther, the member for Dunkley, and Tim Wilson, the member for Goldstein. Chris fought hard to retain for us a seat that has not always been safe for our party, but I predict that he will earn the support of the people of Dunkley for many years to come. I am eagerly looking forward to hearing his maiden speech in a few weeks time as a fellow generation Y Liberal. Tim is of course one of the leading intellects of the modern Liberal Party. His maiden speech tonight powerfully demonstrated his capacity for deep thought, old policy ambition, and leadership. Tim offered optimistic and forward-looking vision of Liberalism that not only is morally right but has the capacity to earn widespread support in our community.

It is worth reflecting just briefly on why Victoria returned such a strong result for the coalition and such a poor result for the Labor Party. Although my impressive colleagues and our attractive platform no doubt played a part, I think we should be honest: it was not all about us. It was about at least two other people: (1) the Leader of the Opposition and (2) the Premier of Victoria. The Liberal Party did well and the Labor Party did poorly because the Victorian people know Bill Shorten better than anyone else in Australia does, and they got a very good preview of what a Shorten government might be like in the form of the Victorian Labor Daniel Andrews government. It was a gift from heaven, a perfect demonstration of the key philosophical divide that still exists in modern Australian politics, when the Country Fire Authority issue leapt onto the campaign. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate the difference between the Liberal approach and the Labor approach. In the Victorian Labor government we have a premier who puts unions and collective power ahead of individuals and volunteers. We have a government willing to use state power to force on free civil society onerous restrictions and burdens that they should not have to deal with. These are people who give their own time freely just to protect their communities. They ask for nothing in return. They give up their weekends, they give up their evenings, they spend time away from their families because it is important to them to contribute to their community by protecting it. But Daniel Andrews owed a debt to the union movement, and it had to be delivered at any cost, even at the expense of volunteers. The few hundred paid staff of the CFA and their union paymasters had to be put ahead of the 60,000 volunteers.

The Victorian people have sent a very clear message to us here in federal parliament but also to Spring Street in Victoria. They do not want to see governments gang up on volunteers. They do not want to see organisations like the CFA disrespected. They want to see their contribution valued, supported and respected. That is something that I think all of us should be able to do. That is something that I do not think should be a partisan issue, but in this campaign it was, and there is no doubt that it played a decisive role in the Victorian Liberal Party's success at this election.

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

I would like to commence my address-in-reply by thanking the voters of Tasmania for expressing confidence in the Tasmanian Greens and for allowing us to retain the two seats that we held in this the states house, and I would like to commit both myself and, I am sure, Senator Whish-Wilson to doing everything we can in this place to represent Tasmania and the values of our party during the 45th Parliament. I also make the observation in the context of the vote in Tasmania that it was nothing less than an absolutely shocking result for the Liberal Party. They lost all three of their House of Representatives seats, and we saw, thanks to the machinations of Senator Abetz, the demise of the only Liberal minister from Tasmania in the previous government—former Senator Richard Colbeck. It has been instructive, to say the least, to watch Senator Abetz dance his way away from responsibility for the appalling result that the Liberal Party suffered in Tasmania.

I also want to make the obvious observation that Tasmanians voted unambiguously in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for an increase in the delivery of essential public services—increased funding for schools, increased funding for hospitals and increased funding for a range of other public services. They voted for Labor members, they voted for Greens members and they voted for Independents, in the form of Mr Wilkie in the lower house and, of course, of Senator Lambie in the upper house—all of whom are unambiguous supporters of increased levels of public service in Tasmania. Tasmanians have had a gutful of the cut, cut, cut approach of the Liberal Party. They want to see more money expended on essential public services in Tasmania, and the Greens will stand with them and work as hard as we possibly can to help deliver on that aspiration.

I want to acknowledge that this is the first address that I am making to this chamber as the Greens immigration spokesperson and I want to thank and pay extreme credit to former immigration spokesperson for the Greens, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. She gave her heart and her soul to this portfolio for a long period of time, and I hope to continue to build on the work that she has done both inside this parliament and outside it. It is worth noting that, as we speak, the government's so-called border protection regime is crumbling before our very eyes. We are seeing in the recently revealed Nauru files yet more allegations of widespread abuse and, pertinently, a complete and abject failure by government to respond in an adequate way.

Within 12 hours of those shocking items of film being aired on Four Corners, we saw the Prime Minister had, quite rightly, moved towards calling a royal commission into Don Dale and into child protection and child custody in the Northern Territory. That was a quite right and quite reasonable response from the Prime Minister. But I have to ask the question: what is it about Don Dale that motivated the Prime Minister to respond so quickly, that is—according to him, to the Liberal Party, to the Nationals and to the Labor Party—lacking in regards to the allegations we have heard around what is going on on Nauru and on Manus Island? What is so different? Is it that it is happening on mainland Australia? If that is the only reason, people need to look again at what is going on and at the frameworks that we have established around Manus and Nauru. This is not only being done in Australia's name but also being done by Australia. It is being done by our government. Australians will not be happy to let this government continue to wash its hands of responsibility for what is going on on Manus Island and on Nauru.

It is also worth pointing out that we are still seeing the boats. They are still coming towards Australia. We may turn them back and we may drop a veil of secrecy over what is going on in international waters, in Australia's territorial waters and in the territorial waters of other countries. We may drop that veil of secrecy on it, but we know that the boats are still departing. We know that people are still putting their lives at risk going to sea in unseaworthy vessels and we know that the business model of the people smugglers is still viable.

Debate interrupted.