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

There's obviously an election looming, and I want to take this opportunity to share a few thoughts with Australians who are thinking about how they might vote in this election. I have to say, it's getting harder and harder to tell the Labor Party and the Liberal and National parties apart. They are in absolute lockstep on approving new coal and gas projects. They are in absolute lockstep on destroying nature and, in particular, destroying our native forests. They are in absolute lockstep in refusing to make billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share of tax so we can actually offer meaningful support to Australians—for example, by wiping student debt, allowing every Australian to visit their GP with no out-of-pocket costs and putting dental health into Medicare, which is critical. The last time I looked, your mouth was part of your body, and you should be able to get your teeth fixed under the same public health framework that you can use for the rest of your body. On that basis, we should also put mental health properly into Medicare. Labor and the Liberals are in absolute lockstep.

I say to people, if you think the system that we're living under today and that has actually been created by decades of Labor and Liberal governments is going just fine, then, by all means, keep voting for the Labor and Liberal parties. But, if you want change, if you think we need stronger climate action, to do more to protect nature, to make big corporations pay their fair share of tax and to make billionaires pay their fair share of tax so we can do things like allow every Australian to visit a GP with no out-of-pocket costs and put dental and mental health into Medicare, then you have to vote for it. Change is possible. It is possible, but people are going to have to vote for change.

I want to talk a little bit about the billionaires. Australia's billionaires are making off like bandits. Collectively, the 150 Australians who each own over $1 billion have doubled their wealth in the last six years, and collectively now, those 150 billionaires in Australia have hoarded an eye-watering $585 billion in wealth. If we said they had to pay just 10 per cent of that in tax every year that would raise enough revenue to allow every Australian to visit a GP whenever they wanted, with no out-of-pocket costs. Those are the costings that we've had double-checked by the Parliamentary Budget Office. Those revenue measures, those expenditure measures, are rock solid. We know how we would raise the money, and we know how it could be spent. Taxing billionaires 10 per cent of their wealth every year would allow every Australian to visit a GP with no out-of-pocket costs.

Since Labor came to office, Gina Rinehart has pocketed another $10 billion, which brings her fortune to $40 billion, yet millions of Australians cannot afford to see a GP. That tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of the Labor and Liberal parties and the Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, who I remind folks said we should judge a society by how it looks after the vulnerable, not how it looks after billionaires. Under his government, the billionaires are getting richer while millions of Australians cannot afford to see their GP.

This is the system built by the Labor and Liberal parties that is now being protected by the Labor and Liberal parties. Let's be very clear about one thing: billionaires don't create wealth; they accumulate and hoard it. They've either inherited fortunes or profited from industries wrecking the planet. They dodge tax at an industrial scale while public services are crumbling in this country and millions of Australians cannot afford to see a doctor, cannot afford to see a dentist and cannot afford to pay the rent or put food on the table. We should tax billionaire wealth so we can do more to help everyday Australians who are struggling.

Foreign policy is another area where Labor and the Liberals are in lockstep. The slide into fascism in the US continues. President Trump has recently unveiled his dystopian, nightmarish vision for Gaza. He supports a genocide. He wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza and other parts of illegally occupied territories and he wants to turn Gaza into some kind of resort, some kind of Riviera. Well, they really are saying the quiet things out loud now in the United States, aren't they? This has to be resisted. It has to be fought. We have to stand up, resist and fight with everything we've got because, if we don't fight it now, tomorrow may be too late.

Here, the Labor Party should be fighting Mr Dutton and Mr Trump with everything they've got, but Labor have refused to stand up to Israel. They have engaged in hand-wringing, they've engaged in complicity and they've engaged in excuses. While countries like Spain and Ireland are taking a stand, Australia is falling in line behind the US and refusing to call it what it is. This is not the policy of a sovereign nation; it is the policy of a lackey nation enthralled to the United States. We should have in Australia a strong, independent foreign policy that prioritises our national interests over the national interests of the United States and anywhere else. That means an arms embargo on the genocidal government of Israel, sanctions on the genocidal war criminals leading the Israeli government and full self-determination for the people of Palestine, and it includes recognising Palestine.

I want to end by talking about forests in Tasmania. Logging native forests is turbocharging the breakdown of the planet's climate. It is an absolute calamity, a catastrophe, for biodiversity. It is sending species like that beautiful little bird the swift parrot into extinction. It's a mendicant industry that costs the Australian taxpayers many tens and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a year that should be spent on things like building more homes for people and fixing up our health system. There is every good reason to end native forest logging. Here's another one: logging our native forests makes it more likely that we will suffer catastrophic bushfires. Logging our native forests makes them more flammable than old forests. Logging our native forests exposes our communities to greater fire risk. Logging native forests means more bushfires with a greater impact. If we want to keep our community safe, we need to stop logging our native forests. If we want to protect nature, we need to stop logging our native forests. If we want to end the breakdown of the planet's climate, we need to stop logging. If we want to save tens of millions of dollars a year, we need to stop logging native forests. The time to end native forest logging is right now, and the Greens have a plan to do that. For the sake of nature, for the sake of humanity, we have to stop destroying our precious native forests.