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

I move:

That the Senate take note of Senator Wong's response to my question on housing and Senator McAllister's response to Senator Duniam's question on the environment.

I'll start with the latter. The simple fact is that industrial salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania is directly causing the extinction of the Maugean skate, of which there are fewer than 120 individuals left. After surviving for countless millennia, it is now sliding into extinction, thanks to the failure of the environment minister, Ms Plibersek, to stand up to the kind of political rubbish we just heard from Senator Duniam.

I want to be very clear to everyone listening: if you're buying Tasmanian farmed salmon, that is 'extinction salmon'. The Tasmanian aquaculture industry is forcing the Maugean skate into extinction, and they're doing it with no compunction whatsoever. They're doing it in their relentless pursuit of profit. This is not about jobs. It's about profit. So anyone who's buying Tasmanian farmed salmon, you are contributing to the extinction of a species in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. So I urge people to stop buying Tasmanian farmed salmon. Stop it. It's extinction salmon. Do not support, with your purchasing dollars, the extinction of the Maugean skate.

We also had a very interesting response from Senator Wong to the questions I asked. I was very clear in the questions I asked Senator Wong, on behalf of all of my colleagues in the Greens, which were directly about the $176 billion over the next decade that will be handed out in tax concessions to property speculators under a business-as-usual scenario. That $176 billion of tax concessions, in the form of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, means that a property speculator who might own one investment property—or five, 10, 20, 30 and, in some cases, 300, 400 and 500 investment properties—can use those tax concessions, that cash that they're basically being handed by either one of the establishment parties in this place, to outbid at an auction someone who's trying to buy their first home.

That is, as Senator Barbara Pocock says, absolutely shameful. It's absolutely shameful. When asked why Labor wouldn't work constructively with the Greens to address that chronic unfairness, which is also putting massive upward pressure on house prices in Australia and pricing millions of renters out of the housing market, all we got from Senator Wong was a diatribe about Mr Chandler-Mather.

I think that Senator Shoebridge is right. I don't think she likes Mr Chandler-Mather. I think he's living rent free in Labor's head, one of the few places you can get decent rental in this country— Mr Chandler-Mather living rent free in the Labor Party's head!

So I put the question to Minister Wong as to whether her government are seriously so committed to handing over $176 billion over the next decade in tax concessions to property speculators that they would actually go to a double dissolution election to defend them, which is effectively what the Prime Minister has been out threatening over the last 48 hours. I also asked whether tax breaks for property speculators, which are some egregiously disadvantaged renters trying to get into the market, are so important that Labor would prefer to go to an election on that basis rather than work with the Greens to level the playing field for renters and take some of the heat out of the housing market in Australia, which would allow Australian renters, millions of whom aspire to own their own home one day, a decent crack at actually making that dream come true. And what did we get from Senator Wong? Crickets, nothing, a refusal to entertain. Labor's got to do better.

Question agreed to.