Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Each week, my office hears from members of the community who are experiencing deep hardship and frustration in many parts of Western Australia. In every part of our state, people are struggling with the cost of living. At a time when the majority of Australians are burdened by the cost of everyday living expenses in a way not seen in a generation, we are subjected to report after report of big businesses price gouging, corporations recording multibillion-dollar profits and other short-term, bandaid solutions put forward by the government.

The reality is this: successive governments in our country have created an Australia so often defined by a sinister hierarchy of wealth and exploitation. We have, in this country, systems that rely on the private sector to provide essential services—services that should be free and accessible as a human right. When the government allows underregulated corporations to take advantage of consumers to jack up prices and prioritise profiteering above all else, how can it be a surprise that there is an increase in inflation and cost of living? When the energy and mining moguls that own politicians outright, from both sides and from both political parties, are able to wield their will so easily in chambers like this, it should not be a shock to a minister or to any other commentator that we see soaring prices of petrol and electricity. When we have a situation where corporations are allowed legally to ruthlessly price gouge and rake in billions of dollars in profit, how can anyone in his place be surprised by the consequences we see?

We see extreme wealth inequality in this country. And for those who are increasing their wealth on the backs of community members, there is another perk which then deepens the extreme wealth disparity. That is the reality that billionaires and corporations in Australia often pay little or no tax. The current wealth of Australia's billionaire class is $503 billion, over half a trillion dollars. During the pandemic, Australia's wealthiest people made $64.8 billion, while 2.7 million Australians lost their jobs or work hours. One in three wealthy corporations do not even pay tax, and the Australian government continues to hand out billions in public subsidies to fossil fuel corporations. I cannot stress enough that, while our community is struggling to pay for medical care, for education, for a home, for food, for water, tax cuts continue to flow and subsidies are given to the wealthiest portion of the population and the most profitable corporations. And this has an incredibly negative impact.

What we see from the government in response to this is a so-called vision outlined in their May budget—and they went out of their way to frame it as a cost-of-living budget. But if you look at the responses within that budget, you see short-term policy measures that fail to address the foundational systemic issues that underpin our current economic and social system and the deep unfairness within those systems. The WA government, for instance, feels it deserves a pat on the back for distributing a couple of hundred dollars to those who pay electricity bills in our state when the reality is that that does very little for those on the brink of losing their home, those unsure as to where the money will come from to pay the gas bill, to pay the insurance bill, to be able to actually move out of the place they've just been evicted from because their landlord is able to do that because we're one of the only states that has no-fault evictions.

We see from this government, still, a lack of concrete consideration or action on the issues that Australians are voicing their concerns about, the actual changes that we need on the essentials: healthcare, financial sustainability and housing. The situation that we have right now is one that is grinding people into the ground. Eighty-five per cent of Western Australian tenants are in extreme rental stress. In places like Mandurah, renters are spending 46 per cent of their income on rent. In Perth, for instance—the capital city of Western Australia—the rental vacancy rate is 0.4 per cent. People are literally lining up—hundreds of them—trying to find a roof over their head, trying to find a rental and being forced to bid against each other behind closed doors to get somewhere to live, even though that is not a legally approved process. Yet they are still unable to find a roof over their head.

We have 380,000 people in WA who have gone hungry over the course of this year. Half of them were in employed households, yet they went hungry. A single parent in an average household only has $1.40 left over after meeting a week's basic living expenses. How is anybody meant to get ahead, let alone feel secure, under that kind of financial pressure? The result of this continual stress and fear is that we see so many in our community struggling with health conditions, including mental health conditions, that are brought on by living in a state of perpetual stress. Last year, Australians worked 86 million additional hours. Yet we have, in WA, 380,000 people who went hungry last year. That is not okay. Those are the warning signs of a deeply broken system.

Without proper rental protections, for instance, people in places like WA's Pilbara region—where we have seen landlords asking $1,850 a week for a basic rental— are being priced out of their community. We have community members across our state who are struggling to get access to the basics of a GP, because the bulk-billing rate in somewhere like Perth, for instance, is just slightly over 10 per cent. This isn't exclusive to WA. In Hobart, the bulk-billing rate is 0.8 per cent. Our system is struggling and straining just as profoundly as the people of this nation, and it is the political decisions made in this parliament that maintain a cycle which keeps people in poverty and which denies them access to a healthcare system that is currently unable to handle the status quo when combined with the chronically low rates of support system payments like the disability support pension, carers payments and jobseeker.

Not only do we have systems that trap people in poverty; we also have systems that this place that we occupy could fix with the stroke of a pen. Yet so often the debate in this place is dominated by the needs of those that already have far too much and already wield far too much political influence in this space. We need, in this chamber, to begin advocating for the actual actions the community needs us to take: to stop this government spending billions of dollars on nuclear submarines and fossil fuel corporation subsidies and actually invest in the NDIS, in health care and in affordable housing for all.