Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nine years under the LNP government have set a very low bar, so Labor's budget is better than we have had for a long time, but there is so much more that could have and should have been done to support people and to provide the services they so desperately need, especially with the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis. This budget is not the change people were hoping for or waiting for since they voted for a different parliament at the May election.

It is shocking and shameful that in a wealthy country like Australia millions of people are suffering and struggling under poverty. These are not just numbers; they are real people living in our communities, in our cities, in our towns, in our suburbs, in our streets. These are our neighbours, they are our friends, yet this budget does nothing to support them. What is even more offensive and obscene is that this budget, Labor's first budget, locks in $254 billion of stage 3 tax cuts for billionaires, for politicians and for the wealthiest. Labor did not find it difficult to deliver these billions on a platter to those who least need it but they very easily chose not to raise JobSeeker above the poverty line. They chose not to put dental and mental health care into Medicare. They chose not to make early learning universal and free or to improve wages and conditions for educators. They chose not to support university workers, who are striking across the country because they are undervalued and disrespected. This budget fails young people and women across the country, who are disproportionately impacted by the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, and the climate crisis. We had hoped that Labor had pinched our policy of one million affordable public and community homes but theirs is a house of cards that funds 10,000 dwellings in reality, with the rest left up to the whims of the developers. They pinched the slogan but, sadly, not the substance. The consequences of Labor's choices are that now everyday people are left to make the really heartbreaking choices.

That's where the difficulty in choices lies, not the choices that Labor had. That was a pretty easy decision, and now everyday people are left to make these really difficult choices—between paying the power bill or putting food on the table, going to the dentist or paying the rent, turning on heating in winter and cooling in summer or buying school uniforms for their children.

Budgets are there. They should be there to improve the wellbeing of people. They should be providing cost-of-living relief and increased support. But those on the lowest incomes are the hardest hit with this budget—while those at the top end of town get massive tax cuts and corporations are allowed to keep on profiteering, with no holds barred.

Labor has made the choice to continue at least $40 billion in fossil fuel subsidies, including $1.9 billion to expand the gas industry. They have chosen to exacerbate and accelerate the climate crisis. This is unconscionable at a time when climate change is biting here and across the globe. Record rainfalls and dangerous floods are wreaking havoc yet again on our communities. Our communities have recently borne the brunt of such disasters. Sure, there are some good measures in the budget, but they are just small tweaks, here and there, not the transformational reform that we need at this time.

This is not the budget for the times we are in, this is not the budget that people expected and this is definitely not the budget that our environment needs. Labor still has the choice of working with the Greens to axe the tax cut for the wealthy, to end new coal and gas mines, to freeze rents, to put dental and mental health into Medicare, to scrap student debt and to raise the rate of JobSeeker. That's not a difficult decision—but it sure is a moral and responsible one.