Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that I have received the following letter, dated 11 February 2025, from Senator McKim:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following matter is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Labor Government to support the Greens plan to tax Australia's billionaires and use the revenue to help fund urgent cost of living relief, including getting dental into Medicare and making it free to see the GP."

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

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

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Labor Government to support the Greens plan to tax Australia's billionaires and use the revenue to help fund urgent cost of living relief, including getting dental into Medicare and making it free to see the GP.

Australia's billionaires are making off like bandits. There are just 150 of them and, collectively, their wealth has doubled in the last six or seven years. Collectively, the 150 billionaires in this country have now hoarded an eye-watering, a staggering $585 billion between them.

If you are a nurse, teacher, carpenter, plumber or cleaner, you go to work and you work hard, but you don't get to keep everything you earn. You pay taxes on what you earn—in income tax. That is actually a good thing that people pay tax because it allows governments to provide services. Some of those services are universal, others are deliberately targeted—and rightly so—at the people who most need assistance.

What about the billionaires? Why don't billionaires have to pay a tax on their wealth? If billionaires paid just a 10 per cent tax on their net wealth over $1 billion that would raise about $50 billion over the next decade. That just happens to be exactly what the Parliamentary Budget Office have costed for the Greens of what it would cost to allow every Australian to see their GP, for free, whenever they needed to. If we as a country were prepared to make billionaires pay their fair share of tax, that would raise enough revenue for every Australian to be able to see a GP whenever they needed to with no out-of-pocket expenses.

Let's weigh this up. This should not be a difficult calculation. Let's weigh it up. On one hand, we could ask 150 people who collectively have hoarded nearly $600 billion in personal wealth to pay a 10 per cent tax—over billion dollars—on wealth they own so that every person in this country could see a GP whenever they need to with no out-of-pocket expenses at all. Let's think: every person could get a free GP visit, or we could just keep looking after the billionaires and keep allowing them to accumulate even more of their already eye-wateringly large hordes of money.

The billionaires, or everyone getting a GP visit for free with no out-of-pocket expenses—this should not be a difficult choice for our country. Somehow it is a difficult choice for the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Nationals. In fact, it doesn't seem such a difficult choice for them because they're just going to end up on the side of the billionaires. In doing so, they're basically saying to Australians that in a wealthy country you should keep having to pay to see your GP.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian people just got a small insight there as to why they should be very scared of the potential Labor-Green minority government in the next few months, because these guys over there, the Greens, don't understand basic economics, they don't understand basic finances and they don't understand the difference between wealth and income. What we just heard there is that they are going to put a tax on billionaires. I don't even know if their figures are exactly correct, but let's say they're right. I'm going to accept their figures that there are 150 with $600 billion in wealth. If they're going to tax them at 10 per cent and take $60 billion, that's a wealth tax. They'll get $60 billion or so for that, and that's apparently going to fund their dental plan, which is costed over four years at $50 billion, I just heard.

What do we do at the end of the four years? Once you tax the billionaires, you have no billionaires left, or they have much less wealth. This plan is a plan to fund it for only a few years. That doesn't provide any income over time. It simply takes the wealth that we have today to fund something very temporary and leaves the bills for future Australians going forward. This is not a plan. This is a slogan, something that the Greens specialise in because they don't really have a sustainable plan for our country.

The sustainable plan for our country to deliver public services is to make sure we continue to create companies and businesses that produce much wealth going forward. We need billions of dollars of wealth to be created every year to fund the public services we have here in this country. We have just been through this experience with the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It was costed originally at just $16 billion, and that was in gross terms. There was some state funding included in that figure. Today, it's costing the budget almost $50 billion, and it's projected to go to over $80 billion at the end of this decade. That was an example of where we haven't planned very well, and it's putting an enormous strain on our budget, our economy and our labour market because we haven't planned for it correctly. We made some mistakes there, clearly, that have to be fixed up.

It is easy, of course, to promise everybody better public services, new public services and free public services, but I don't take the costings of the Greens with any grain of salt. I don't care who's done them, because lots of those bodies costed the NDIS and got that wrong. We need to be very careful about that. If we're going to fund something like this, we also need to make sure that on the other side of the ledger we have a sustainable revenue stream that can fund it, otherwise we are going to bankrupt this nation. We've been riding high the last couple of years, and it's easy to be lulled into a sense of complacency with a couple of years of budget surpluses, which have come almost exclusively on the back of a massive mining boom, bigger than what we experienced in the late 2000s and early 2010s. What we've had since the Ukraine war is the biggest trade boom in our history. That has delivered a temporary, illusionary surplus for the Commonwealth budget, but in the years to come—it's starting this year—the deficits are going to grow bigger and bigger every year. Our debt is already at very high levels post-COVID, and we need to be very careful with what we spend.

I hope, God willing—let's pray—that the Greens political party do not get control of the finance benches in a few months time. This is a small window—this is just one of their policies; they've got even more crazy stuff out there—into how they would destroy this nation's finances, and the only way they'll get anywhere close to doing that is if the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, is in a position to form a minority government. There's no way, of course, the Greens will agree to form government with us or with Mr Peter Dutton, but they very well could. But I know they're licking their lips at forming government with the Labor Party. These little asks here are just the precursor for the negotiations that are to come with the Australian Labor Party.

Whatever Labor senators say right now you can totally discount. No matter what they say before an election, they will completely change their tune if an alliance with the Greens is the difference between them staying over there and coming over here. If they need to agree with the Australian Greens to stay over there on the government benches, they'll sign away their mother-in-law, maybe even their mum, because they want to stay in government. They'll be desperate to stay in government. You can't trust them right now. The only way to avoid a Labor-Greens government is to not vote for the Labor Party. That's it. If you don't want that chaos, that destruction of our finances, do not vote for the federal Labor Party at the next federal election.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise after two contributions: one from those who have no sense of managing a budget in any possible way, where money comes from nowhere and everything can be provided for immediately; and a negative one from the senator opposite who is from the party that wants to cut and cut and cut—$350 billion. They're the party that said Medicare was an impossible thing to deliver and that said superannuation was an impossibility to deliver. In between those two gross extremes that have no responsible vision for the nation, there sits the Labor Party governing with integrity, creating not simplistic solutions to complex challenges, as proposed by Senator McKim in this urgency motion, but solutions that will involve the hard work of the kind that the Albanese Labor government has undertaken to ease the cost-of-living pressures that are a real thing for Australians.

Let's be clear. We in Labor don't just talk about fairness; we deliver it. We believe in making multinationals pay, and we delivered that in legislation in November 2024. We believe in ensuring that every taxpayer gets a tax cut, so we delivered stage 3 tax cuts to every working Australian, whereas Senator Canavan would have only given them to a much smaller number of people and certainly left those in the lower end of the income band stranded, ignored and without any increase in their tax return. We believe in strengthening Medicare so that every Australian can access quality and affordable health care. Here we are in government, doing what we've done now for five decades—after delivering Medicare, we've had to rebuild it time and time again. And then there was that miserly, penny-pinching, cost-of-everything, value-of-nothing contribution that we had from Senator Canavan, which leads nowhere good for our nation.

The Greens want to claim that they're the only party concerned with the cost of living, but the reality is that, while they grandstand here in the parliament and make demands without a plan, the Albanese government is delivering real relief. For millions of Australians, being able to see a GP without an out-of-pocket cost is the difference between getting the care that they need and delaying an appointment until things have got much worse, they end up in hospital and it costs even more. It's a ridiculous proposition. That's why we had to fix it once again, and we tripled the bulk-billing incentive. That is the single biggest investment in bulk-billing in Medicare's history. When Labor returned to government after a period of attack on that fundamental need of Australians, it was clear that Labor was the only party that would deliver for Medicare and for the health of Australians.

So we introduced this policy this time, in the last three years, and more than six million Australians have had additional GP visit that have been bulk-billed. That's really a massive change for pensioners, parents and low-income Australians who are no longer forced to pay to see a doctor. It means fewer people having to make the difficult choice between medical care and paying their bills. We need healthy Australians who can afford care who are able to continue to contribute to our society. This isn't theory to us as Labor people. We are making sure that Medicare holds up. Bulk billing rates, which were in freefall after the nine years of Liberal cuts, are now rising again, and that's just one part of our $2.8 billion of investment of your Australian taxpayer dollars to strengthen what we know you value: Medicare—that little card in your wallet that you wouldn't have except for the Labor Party delivering the whole policy and rebuilding Medicare after the vandal-like attacks of those opposite.

We're investing in urgent care centres. Millions of Australians have already had the benefit of that since we came to government in 2022 and brought that into being. There are more free mental health services and higher rebates for essential tests and treatments. This is real relief for Australians who need it most. Now, the Greens demand a whole raft of new taxes. This government has ethically and in a principled way taken deliberate action to ensure multinationals pay their fair share, and we will make sure Australians get the benefit of that investment.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to this motion today. While I agree with the sentiment that we do need tax reform in this country, I think the idea of taxing billionaires is overly simplistic. But we do need tax reform. I disagree with the former speaker that the Labor government has done enough about taxing foreign multinationals. You're not serious about taxing foreign multinationals until you lift the rate of withholding tax on profits sent offshore. I've spoken many times recently about the fact that the tax treaty with Ireland hasn't been updated since 1983. Given that Ireland's company tax rate dropped down to 12½ cents when they entered the EU 20 years ago, there really is no excuse as to why successive Australian governments haven't dealt with the rort that is shifting profits to Ireland. So, rather than taxing billionaires that live here in Australia, what we really need to do start doing is taxing profits that gets sent offshore. We need to lift the withholding tax rate to a rate that's higher than the onshore tax rate.

The other thing we need to do, of course, is one of the policies of People First—as a matter of fact, it's our first policy—is to lift the tax-free threshold to $40,000, because we believe that people shouldn't be taxed below the cost of living. It's an absolute outrage that we have people on low incomes paying 16c on the dollar plus 12 per cent superannuation plus 2c Medicare when it is 30c on the dollar up to $45,000 and over $45,000 they pay 30c on the dollar, 12c superannuation and 2c Medicare. Once you start earning more than $45,000, you're losing 44c on the dollar. That is an absolute outrage. Income tax is way too high in this country.

But it's not just tax reform we need in this country. We need to reform our entire monetary policy. Yet again, People First is the only party that actually understands global capital markets. We're the only ones that understand the way Australia's balance sheet works. For too many years, thanks to Paul Keating lifting capital controls in 1985, we have been too dependent on foreign debt, and we need to start relying on equity. Just like companies issue new shares on the stock exchange, Australian governments can issue new shares to build vital infrastructure that will generate recurring revenue to help pay for things like dental services, GP services, schools and hospitals, because we shouldn't just be taxing people. We can generate profits from the untapped wealth in this country in a way that not only delivers essential services but gives state governments another way of generating income that they have lost since they privatised way too many assets throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've got half an hour this evening to discuss the latest proposal of the Greens. I'm not sure you would call it a policy, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one confused here, because, while it's pretty consistent for the Greens to be going after the billionaires on tax—I get them doing that—aren't they lining up with them on electoral reform? There's a genuine matter of urgency to get the billionaires out of our electoral system, which we could be debating today. So I'm not sure. The Greens are the billionaires' besties one day; they're the bad guys the next. 'Frenemies' might be the best way to describe the relationship.

But, on the serious matters contained within the motion, the Albanese Labor government has been delivering cost-of-living relief, and it's the Albanese Labor government that has been ensuring multinationals pay their fair share of tax—two things we do because they're consistent with Labor values, with the values of every Labor member on this side, with the values of a Labor Prime Minister and with the values of a Labor government who has been elected to govern. Under our government, we've passed legislation to set a global minimum tax and a domestic minimum tax for multinational enterprise groups with an annual global revenue of at least $1.2 billion from January 2024. We've worked with our partners in the OECD to coordinate this approach for a fairer domestic and international tax system because we believe that multinationals making a profit in Australia should be paying tax on those profits.

And, of course, cost of living remains our focus. It's our focus in this chamber and the other chamber, and it's the focus of every single minister in our government, because it's the focus of the Australian people at the moment. It is our focus particularly in health. You can see that with the measures we've taken recently to triple the bulk-billing incentive, which is the largest ever investment in bulk-billing in the history of Medicare. And, because of that, we've reversed the decline in bulk-billing. I will remained the Senate why bulk-billing was in decline and freefall. It was because the former health minister, Mr Peter Dutton, froze the Medicare rebate, which started this freefall, and he claimed at the time there were too many free Medicare services.

We're also as a government investing significantly in Medicare urgent care clinics across the country, including six in my home state of South Australia; 1.1 million Australians know the value of these clinics, just how important they are and how valuable they've been when they've visited them. They've got treatment for conditions and injuries which are urgent but not life threatening. This is taking pressure off our hospitals and getting more people treatment sooner. We're also working tirelessly to bring down the cost of medicines for the Australian public, freezing the maximum cost of PBS prescriptions to $31.60 and making nearly 200 medicines available for 60-day prescriptions.

On the weekend we announced the largest ever investment in women's health: half-a-billion dollars, including the first PBS listing for new oral contraceptive pills in more than 30 years with Yaz and Yasmin finally being listed on the PBS, and the first PBS listing for new menopausal hormone therapies in over 20 years. This will save hundreds of dollars a year for more than 200,000 women. It also includes larger Medicare payments and more bulk-billing for costs women experience—the tax on womanhood in our medical system—for IUDs and birth control implants. Around 300,000 women will save up to $400 in out-of-pocket costs on these items. These measures come into effect immediately—a real cost-of-living measure making a real difference in the lives of Australian women, building on our work on cheaper medicines, Medicare and the development of urgent care clinics.

Our work also continues as we deliver cheaper child care across the country. We're expanding access to the single parent payment,. We have boosted paid parental leave, increased income support, delivered free TAFE and are fully funding public schools, including a massive investment in my home state of South Australia to fix the black hole left by the former Liberal government when they gutted those school funding agreements. We're investing $32 billion in our Homes for Australia Plan to build 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade. We're providing energy bill relief directly to families, and we have delivered a tax cut to every single Australian taxpayer.

I joined the Labor Party because I believe in the power of good public policy delivered through government to deliver good outcomes for people. These things have happened because there's a Labor government—a Labor government led by a Labor Prime Minister implementing Labor values through meaningful reforms which help with the cost of living and have a positive impact on people's lives.

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

Last year, Australia's 150 billionaires made some $67,000 per hour—each one of them. While everyday families struggled with the basic cost of living, billionaires made 1,300 times the national wage of an Australian. Our growing wealth inequality and underfunded systems are leaving our communities without access to the medical and mental health care that they urgently need. In the electorate of Perth, in Western Australia, only one out of 46 GP clinics is a bulk-billing clinic. Outside of this, the community is paying, on average, almost $50 for a consultation. That is on top of soaring rents and grocery prices.

Meanwhile, half a million Australians are living in so-called GP deserts, receiving 40 per cent fewer GP services than the national average. This means that people have less access to check-ups, screenings and medication management support. WA leads the country in these GP deserts. People in these areas have a rate of passing away that is 1.5 times higher than the average due to preventable causes.

The Greens are the only party with a plan to genuinely tackle the inequality that is rampant in our society and to fund the health care and other systems that our community needs. This will mean that you will be able to go to the GP for free again and you will be able to get the health care you need where and when you need it once again and that our hospitals will be funded properly once again. These are the changes the community has demanded.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a time to be alive in Australia! While ordinary people across the country struggle with skyrocketing prices and unlimited rent increases and can't afford to see the dentist or send their kids to child care, the total wealth of Australia's 150 billionaires more than doubled between 2018 and 2024. The Labor and Liberal parties have created and continue to uphold an economic system that allows Gina Rinehart to have $40.6 billion in wealth while others have to choose between paying the rent and getting enough food on the table.

I can tell you why the two-party system is dying in this country. It's because both Labor and the Liberals are under the thumb of billionaires and their big corporations, taking millions in dodgy donations, private jet flights and prime-ministerial photo ops without even an ounce of shame or self-awareness, propping up a system that allows the richest 150 billionaires to increase their wealth faster than they can count while leaving thousands in poverty. It's disgraceful. I'm not surprised that this would happen under the Liberals—but the Labor Party? Come on, comrades. Your forefathers would be embarrassed to see you sitting over there on the government benches, responsible for such a grotesquely unfair economic system that doesn't work for people. It works for the top end of town and the major party donors.

Billionaires should pay their fair share of tax. How on earth is this a position that the major parties can oppose? The revenue should be used to make sure that everyone can access the services and essentials that they need—affordable housing, health care and early childhood education. The Greens will make billionaires pay their fair share of tax by imposing a 10 per cent annual tax on the net wealth of Australia's 150 billionaires, with a 10 per cent limit on capital flight in any year. We will make Gina and Clive pay their fair share of tax so you can fix your teeth, but you're going to have to vote for it.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right across this country, people are skipping going to the doctor because they can't afford the co-payment. They're literally not going to the dentist because they're frightened about the bills, struggling to put good food on the table after paying the last two, which are literally smashing their bank accounts. Rent is going up $100 at a time, and people are leaving the places they love because they can't afford to live there.

It's not a coincidence that that's happening while the rich are getting richer. Their wealth isn't just growing; for billionaires it's skyrocketing. Last year alone, Australian billionaires pocketed an extra $28 billion. That's $3.2 million an hour to all of them or each of them getting $67,000 an hour every hour for the entire year. The richest are hoarding wealth, influence and power while everyday people are told to tighten their belts. We have fossil fuel magnates who take in ever more public money while telling young people that they've got to stop eating avocados to be able to afford a house. People won't be able to afford a house unless something serious changes. Politicians often talk big in this place, but they act small. They fight over crumbs while their billionaire donors feast, and they're selling ordinary Australians out.

The answer isn't more excuses or empty promises. It's simple: tax billionaires and fund a decent life for everyone. Tax them. That means real investment in things that will make a difference, like getting mental health and dental into Medicare and making it free to see the GP. It means cutting off the handouts for the ultrarich. Billionaires didn't get there by working a million times harder than the rest of us; they got there because the system is rigged, and it's time to unrig it. It's time to tax billionaires back to earth.

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

Billionaires should pay their fair share of tax. That should be uncontroversial, but the reality is that neither major party actually believes that. The total wealth of Australia's 150 billionaires has more than doubled in the last six years alone. That's under both Liberal and Labor governments. So many Australians are struggling. They're struggling with skyrocketing prices that mean they can't afford to get to the dentist, pay for child care or get to the doctor, and two-thirds of retirees in private rentals are living in poverty. Meanwhile, billionaire Gina Rinehart's wealth has exploded to $40.6 billion, making her one of the richest people on the planet, with a $10 billion increase under Labor in the last couple of years.

The Greens will make billionaires pay their fair share of tax by imposing a 10 per cent tax each year on the net wealth of the 150 billionaires. We need to calm down about what that will cost because we've got strong and clear costings from the Parliamentary Budget Office. It's expected to raise $50 billion over the next decade, and this could fund dental and mental in Medicare and free education from early childhood through to university. We're a wealthy country. We can afford this. The Greens have a plan to pay for it, and it doesn't involve taxing everyday Australians. Our plan targets the one in three corporations who pay zero tax in this country and the 150 billionaires who doubled their wealth through a pandemic. If the major parties can't support the Greens' plan to tax billionaires, they shouldn't be surprised if, on election night, everyday Australians who want to see access to the services and essential things they need—housing, health care, education—vote for the party who is ready and willing to tax Clive and Gina to make it happen.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the urgency motion moved by Senator McKim be agreed to.