Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Di Natale.

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I rise today to talk about the Turnbull government's first 100 days in office since the federal election. I am really pleased that the Labor Party has raised this MPI. It is really important to reflect on what we have achieved in the first 100 days of this parliament.

In just 10 sitting days since the election, we have seen a lot happen. But let's remember that what we have seen achieved in this parliament has been achieved largely through the support of the Labor Party. Together, Liberal and Labor have joined together to pass a range of cuts that affect the most vulnerable people across the community through the passage of the omnibus bill. They have expanded the growing gap between the rich and the poor at a time when the shadow Treasurer said that growing income inequality is one of the great challenges of this parliament. They have helped drive more investment away from Australia by slashing $800 million from the Clean Energy Innovation Fund and $500 million from ARENA. Again what we have seen is Labor and Liberal getting together to lump more debt and faster repayments on students and on recent graduates.

When it comes to superannuation, we have seen a rabid backbench within the coalition, egged on by the Labor party, ensure that the government drops its superannuation policy on after-tax contributions which only affects the top one per cent of people with super funds. And, to add insult to injury, we have seen just this week Labor and Liberal joining together to give the wealthiest 20 per cent of all Australians a tax cut at the same time as taking away support and valuable services from the great majority of the Australian community, stripping people who care for loved ones of eligibility for back payments in their carer's allowance, booting 383,000 families off family tax benefit supplements, boosting interest payments for people with Centrelink debts and cutting research and development investment.

This MPI should be more accurately entitled, 'What has the Turnbull Government, with the support of the Labor Party, achieved in its first 100 days?' There are quite a lot of shared achievements in a short period of time. Can you just imagine the outpouring and the faux outrage from the Labor Party towards the Greens if the Greens had sided with the government and supported just one of these measures? This is the Labor Party, champions of income inequality, saying, 'We are going to stand up for more fairness in this country,' yet they are joining with the coalition government—we know what they stand for—to slash support for some of the most vulnerable people in the community and to give tax cuts to the wealthy.

The PM has described his great personal moral challenge—other than, of course, keeping his leadership by trying to appease a rabid right wing—as reducing the deficit. He did not mention this moral challenge for four weeks and then he shoved through a tax cut which my Senate colleague Peter Whish-Wilson described as 'an untargeted missile'—and he is right. It is six dollars a week into the pockets of banking executives and MPs. We all get it to get an extra coffee and a bite out of a muffin. And what is that supposed to do to our economy at a cost of $4 billion in lost revenue? It is revenue that could go to hospitals, to schools, to provide more support for new medications. Yet we have got both of the old parties in this place, the Coles and Woolies of politics, saying: 'We're prepared to give a tax cut to the wealthiest Australians. The government ignored all other options to reduce the deficit. It had so many of them. We had CEDA saying that neither the government nor the opposition are embracing the ideas put forward to them. Actually, we would get behind many of those ideas: progressive super contributions; taking the axe to the fuel tax credit; redirecting the private health insurance rebate into the public health system; raising taxes on luxury cars; negotiating better deals for PBS drugs; and negative gearing—which is one of those measures, it must be said, the Labor Party does support. We have got to tackle the myth of trickle-down economics—that somehow putting money in the pocket of the wealthy helps everyone. It does not. The great challenge for us is to ensure that we tackle income inequality by raising revenue from those who can most afford it and not cutting services. (Time expired)