Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor's budget betrays all of those in Australia who are doing it tough. Instead of tackling the housing crisis in affordability, increasing JobSeeker and fully funding the frontline services women need to escape violence, this government is giving property investors $175 billion in tax concessions, locking young people out of the housing market. They're giving fossil fuel corporations $50 billion in subsidies, literally paying to further fuel a climate catastrophe. They're giving wealthy people a $4½ thousand tax cut while keeping the unemployed in poverty. Their cost-of-living solutions are window-dressing for the millions who can't cover the increasing costs of rent, food, fuel and debt right now.

On top of this, Labor's budget offers too little to women. Instead of fully funding frontline services for women fleeing violence, they've just rebadged an existing program. Their budget betrays renters and ignores the housing crisis. Labor's offering an extra $9 a week to around 20 per cent of renters, while rents are expected to go up by an average of $46 a week over the next 12 months. Renters in Adelaide have just experienced the biggest rent increase across our nation. They were looking for more help in this budget. If the government had introduced a rent freeze in 2022, when it was first proposed by the Greens, Australian renters would have saved an average of $3,067 by now.

This budget betrays students. The government has promised to shave some indexation off the top of student debts, but this still leaves millions of young people with a lifetime of repayments. Labor has to stop rewarding the big end of town with fuel subsidies and tax breaks that are only making the climate crisis, the housing crisis and the crisis facing women in violent households worse. There is, indeed, a hole at the centre of this budget, and a few bandaids are nowhere near what's needed to fix it.