Max Chandler-Mather's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
type: channel
language: en-gb
creator: OpenAustralia.org, mprss.php script
date: 2025-09-07T23:05:16+00:00
items: Tropical Cyclone Alfred | Statements on Indulgence | House debates
items: Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
items: Federal Election | Statements by Members | House debates
items: Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
items: Aircraft Noise, Griffith Electorate: Schools | Adjournment | House debates
items: Taxation | Private Members' Business | House debates
items: Housing | Questions without Notice | House debates
items: Federal Election | Constituency Statements | House debates
items: Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
items: Gambling Advertising | Questions without Notice | House debates
items: Taxation: Resources Industry, Housing, Banking and Financial Services | Grievance Debate | House debates
items: Climate Change | Matters of Public Importance | House debates
items: Taxation | Statements by Members | House debates

Tropical Cyclone Alfred | Statements on Indulgence | House debates
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description: I'm so proud of the way that our community responded to Tropical Cyclone Alfred and ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. As the cyclone was bearing down on Brisbane and the community started to face what...
encoded: I'm so proud of the way that our community responded to Tropical Cyclone Alfred and ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. As the cyclone was bearing down on Brisbane and the community started to face what could be the severe consequences of a cyclone making landfall in Brisbane, we put a big callout for volunteers across our community to help, at first with the sandbagging and knocking on doors to let people know that their houses may well be at risk of flooding. Frankly, the response was overwhelming in its positivity. Hundreds of people signed up in the course of just a few days, which allowed us and my colleagues, Elizabeth Watson-Brown and Stephen Bates, to coordinate one of the biggest volunteer efforts I've been involved in, mobilising hundreds of volunteers across our electorates—at first, just to pack and deliver sandbags. In fact, when the community volunteers got there, the lines for those sandbag operations were sometimes four or five hours long. We got them down to 30 or 40 minutes, and that's thanks to the incredible response from our communities across the Brisbane metropolitan region. We met a lot of incredible people along the way. People who had lined up for four hours to pick-up sandbags for themselves had, by the time they got to the front of the line, decided to stay for another three or four hours to help pack sandbags for other people. A disability support worker, who was technically on leave, waited four hours in line to pick up a bunch of sandbags for all of the disabled people she was supporting and then drove around to drop them off across the electorate. I could spend this entire time covering the incredible stories from our community, but what also became clear over the course of this crisis, as we moved from sandbagging to dropping off food to members of our local community who were particularly vulnerable and in the clean-up afterwards—hauling flood damaged furniture onto the street and taking green waste to the tip for the people who otherwise c…
date: 2025-03-26T12:15:00+00:00

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
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description: This is the company—
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date: 2025-03-25T17:14:00+00:00

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
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description: It beggars belief that, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, a housing crisis, a climate crisis and an environmental crisis, in the dying days of this parliament, when Labor could work with...
encoded: It beggars belief that, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, a housing crisis, a climate crisis and an environmental crisis, in the dying days of this parliament, when Labor could work with the Greens to pass much-needed legislation to reduce student debt or allow people to see their GP for free, instead what Labor are doing is a dirty deal with the Liberals and Nationals to weaken Australia's environmental laws. It's disgraceful. In the context of a climate and environmental crisis devastating this country, a series of weakening laws will be passed through this parliament in a deal between Labor and the Liberals and Nationals that may well make it easier for coal and gas projects to continue into the future even where the science proves they're having a devastating impact on our environment. Why is this happening? Basically it seems to be about ensuring the destructive salmon-farming industry can continue down in Tasmania, which is leading to the destruction and extinction of a precious Australian species, the maugean skate. The problem is that it's not just this; it's even worse than that, because the way these laws are written is so broad as to weaken Australia's environmental laws and, again, make it easier for the expansion of coal and gas in this country, cooking the planet. Why on earth in the dying days of this parliament has Labor chosen to do this? When an Australian species faces extinction, they should be going out of their way to protect that native species, the maugean skate. Instead, what they're doing is pre-empting legal challenges from environmental groups that could have successfully protected this species and then changing the rules under the feet of these environmental groups just to make sure the salmon industry can continue. What is the point of having environmental laws if, every time it looks like an environmental or climate group might successfully challenge a coal or gas project or successfully challenge the salmon-farming industry an…
date: 2025-03-25T17:03:00+00:00

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
type: item
description: It beggars belief that, in the dying days of this parliament, in the middle of a housing crisis, a climate crisis, an environmental crisis and a cost-of-living crisis, rather than working with...
encoded: It beggars belief that, in the dying days of this parliament, in the middle of a housing crisis, a climate crisis, an environmental crisis and a cost-of-living crisis, rather than working with the Greens to pass urgent, much-needed legislation on reducing student debt or ensuring people can see their GP for free, instead what Labor are doing is teaming up with Dutton's Liberals to do a dirty deal to weaken Australia's environmental laws. The weakening of these laws may make it easier—
date: 2025-03-25T17:03:00+00:00

Federal Election | Statements by Members | House debates
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description: Right now, this country is run in the interests of billionaires and big corporations. While single parents are forced to make tough choices between feeding their kids or paying the rent, Coles...
encoded: Right now, this country is run in the interests of billionaires and big corporations. While single parents are forced to make tough choices between feeding their kids or paying the rent, Coles and Woolworths record some of the highest profit margins in the world. While mortgage-holders and renters are up to their eyeballs in rental and mortgage stress, struggling to make that next rent or mortgage payment, the Commonwealth Bank recorded a record half-yearly $5 billion profit off the back of the misery of millions of renters and mortgage-holders. It doesn't have to be this way. It genuinely doesn't. While the people in power and the political establishment may rely on crushing your hope that things can get better, they can. This election, we have a genuine chance to change things for the better. You do not have to choose between going backwards under the Liberals or more tinkering around the edges under Labor. We have a genuine chance to elect a broad progressive minority parliament, where we keep the Liberals and Nationals out but we push Labor to take real action on the issues that matter to people's lives—taxing billionaires and big corporations, bringing dental and mental health under Medicare, starting to treat renters like they deserve to be treated rather than like second-class citizens and taking climate change seriously. If you want all of that, then you have an opportunity this election to vote one Greens and push for real, genuine, positive change.
date: 2025-03-25T13:35:00+00:00

Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
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description: yes, don't you worry about that!—to help people access early childhood education. It's genuinely extraordinary. Honourable members interjecting— Now we see some animation in the...
encoded: yes, don't you worry about that!—to help people access early childhood education. It's genuinely extraordinary. Honourable members interjecting— Now we see some animation in the parliament. Good! Why is it that, time and again in this parliament, the lowest income people in this society, the people who are often the most downtrodden, are told to wait time and again. The government has proposed a 20 per cent reduction in student debt but said we have to wait until after the next election. We know the impact of this activity test disproportionately affects not only low-income people but also First Nations people. One of the other really good things about this bill is that it ensures that First Nations children will be eligible for 100 hours of subsidised child care per fortnight. Great! We've just had a Closing the gap report that demonstrates the huge gaps in educational outcomes between First Nations children and other children in this country. So why not accelerate this bill? To be clear, this is not directed at some of the Labor members in this House, because I know that it was not your decision. But it is deeply frustrating when we have gone privately and publicly to the government and said: 'We will pass this bill unamended as quickly as possible. We will secure its passage through the House and Senate using any means necessary to make this bill law before the election.' That's what we've said. And yet we have seen this government turn around and do a dirty deal with the Liberals on electoral reform instead. The effect of one of the other bills that's being gagged and shoved through right now in the Senate will be cutting the access to and amount of DSP, or disability support pension, of young people aged 18 to 21. That's apparently a priority, but actually helping people in this country to get access to child care is not. To give the human impact of the decision to delay this bill, I'll quote from the ABC: Megan Hunt loves being a mum to her two and four-year-o…
date: 2025-02-12T16:58:00+00:00

Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
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description: There's a lot of good in the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025—in particular, getting rid of the childcare activity test, a draconian measure introduced by...
encoded: There's a lot of good in the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025—in particular, getting rid of the childcare activity test, a draconian measure introduced by the Morrison government. To be clear about what it does—it was introduced in 2018 and requires a parent to work, study or volunteer to qualify for the Child Care Subsidy. The effect is to deny around 125,000 kids access to early childhood education—a terrible, terrible measure. While the Greens want it completely abolished, this bill, at the very least, gets rid of it for three days. That's a positive impact on over 100,000 children. That's great. What is very, very frustrating, deeply frustrating, is that a bill that has been Greens policy for a long time is before this parliament and is being effectively delayed. We have heard from the government—despite the fact that the Greens have come out and said, 'We will pass this measure completely unamended,' instead, what the government have said is that they will not pass it in this sitting week, potentially the last week of parliament before the election. You might think: 'Maybe there's just so much on the agenda, and we can't get to helping children access early childhood education. We can't help mothers and fathers get back to work or live good lives.' What's actually happened today is that the government has proposed in the Senate to ram through and accelerate the passage of a stitch-up on electoral reform. The effect of what we're seeing right now is that government has prioritised effectively rigging the electoral system and donation laws rather than passing their own bill—
date: 2025-02-12T16:58:00+00:00

Aircraft Noise, Griffith Electorate: Schools | Adjournment | House debates
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description: It's been more than four years since the opening of Brisbane Airport's second runway, and Labor and the Liberals have done nothing to fix aircraft noise that is smashing thousands of Brisbane...
encoded: It's been more than four years since the opening of Brisbane Airport's second runway, and Labor and the Liberals have done nothing to fix aircraft noise that is smashing thousands of Brisbane residents every single day. Interrupted sleep is a nightly occurrence for many people in Brisbane, and despite having heard from thousands of people on the issue, Labor and the LNP don't seem to care. People in Griffith are sick of token consultation and window-dressing. The solutions are right there in front of us. They are a cap, a curfew and more flights over the water. They are exactly the same solutions that Sydney airport has had since the 1990s. They haven't stopped Sydney from becoming a global destination, having cheap airfares or hosting the Olympics, but they have helped tens of thousands of people get a reprieve from severe, daily aircraft noise. That's exactly why the Greens introduced a private member's bill into parliament to introduce those same measures for Brisbane. It's been four years, and I still haven't heard a single good explanation as to why Sydney deserves better than Brisbane. Why does the Prime Minister's electorate deserve better than Brisbane? These solutions have precedents in Sydney, and they have the backing of the community that are being affected by aircraft noise, but the Labor Party and the LNP won't give them the time of day. Last November, the Greens brought on a vote for the government just to consider a curfew and cap for Brisbane Airport, and neither Labor nor the Liberals could even approve or support that. It was not to pass the bill but just to consider curfews for Brisbane. For three years, the minister for transport has refused to meet with the Brisbane Flight Path Community Alliance. Why? We know from the Greens' Senate inquiry into aircraft noise that she meets regularly with aviation industry representatives. She has plenty of time to meet with them, but when it comes to community organisations like the BFPCA—nada. When this gov…
date: 2025-02-11T19:30:00+00:00

Taxation | Private Members' Business | House debates
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description: And then we can push for a hopeful vision for this country, one that says we can tax billionaires and big corporations, make them pay their fair share in tax and use that to do things like bring...
encoded: And then we can push for a hopeful vision for this country, one that says we can tax billionaires and big corporations, make them pay their fair share in tax and use that to do things like bring dental and mental health for everyone into Medicare so no-one has to skip a meal just so they can fund their kid's trip or their trip to the dentist. We can bring back free university and TAFE so working people in this country can go to university without fear of copping tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. We can tax billionaires and big corporations to build enough public housing in this country so everyone has the home that they need to live a good life, just like people in Australia used to. We can start to bring the energy system back into public hands so we don't have private energy companies ripping us off on our power bills to make massive profits. We can follow Norway and tax our gas industry properly, take that billions of dollars in wealth that is currently going offshore and put it into our country right now to do things like raise the pension above the poverty line, raise Jobseeker and other income support payments above the poverty line, and make sure everyone in this country has a good life. That's what we're fighting for.
date: 2025-02-10T19:15:00+00:00

Taxation | Private Members' Business | House debates
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description: A message to Labor: you don't beat the far right and their billionaire and corporate mates by adopting their policies, taking their money in political donations and offering more of the same. We...
encoded: A message to Labor: you don't beat the far right and their billionaire and corporate mates by adopting their policies, taking their money in political donations and offering more of the same. We have seen it in the US. Trump blamed immigrants for the cost of living and the housing crisis, and what did the Democrats do? They acted tough on migrants, took donations from billionaires and basically proposed the status quo with a bit of tinkering around the edges. Well, we saw the result of that. Somehow they allowed Trump, a billionaire property mogul backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, to become the anti-establishment change candidate. Now Peter Dutton is blaming migrants for the cost-of-living crisis. What are Labor doing? They're passing some of the most draconian antimigrant laws this country has seen. That's what Labor are doing in response. They are breaking their own policy platform to adopt Dutton's policy proposal for mandatory minimum sentencing, and they're dumping their own environmental policy to please a bunch of massive mining corporations—oh, and taking donations from billionaires like Anthony Pratt, himself a supporter of Trump—and proposing basically the status quo with a bit of tinkering around the edges. Now Labor are somehow allowing Peter Dutton—the guy who rides in billionaire Gina Rinehart's private jet to special parties and thinks mining corporations should pay less tax than they already do—to become the anti-establishment change candidate, just like Trump. Time and again we have seen far-right thugs like Trump and Dutton rise to power in times of economic crisis only after political parties like Labor utterly fail to offer any genuine alternative vision, one that directly addresses the cost-of-living and housing concerns of working people and offers an alternative narrative to the one offered by the far right. People are losing hope because the main opposition party is proposing radical right-wing change and the other party is promising bas…
date: 2025-02-10T19:15:00+00:00

Housing | Questions without Notice | House debates
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description: My question is to the Prime Minister. In five years, rents have increased by 55 per cent and house prices by 49 per cent. The income a renter needs to buy a median priced house in a capital city...
encoded: My question is to the Prime Minister. In five years, rents have increased by 55 per cent and house prices by 49 per cent. The income a renter needs to buy a median priced house in a capital city is $197,000, yet the housing minister says Labor wants house prices to keep rising. Will Labor stop giving property investors with multiple properties big tax handouts that turbocharge house prices and deny renters the chance to buy a home and instead finally phase out negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount?
date: 2025-02-10T14:12:00+00:00

Taxation | Private Members' Business | House debates
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description: The motion is seconded, and I reserve my right to speak. Debate adjourned.
encoded: The motion is seconded, and I reserve my right to speak. Debate adjourned.
date: 2025-02-10T11:49:00+00:00

Federal Election | Constituency Statements | House debates
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description: Billionaires have too much power over politics, and it's clear they would love nothing more than to export the same destructive US style politics and Trumpism into Australia. It was on full...
encoded: Billionaires have too much power over politics, and it's clear they would love nothing more than to export the same destructive US style politics and Trumpism into Australia. It was on full display at Trump's inauguration: front row seats for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. They're the richest people in the world. If any of these guys lost 99 per cent of their wealth overnight they'd still wake up billionaires tomorrow. Even if you saved $1,000 a day and you started from the earliest record of first humans—that was 315,000 years ago—you still wouldn't have as much money as any of them right now. If that sounds incomprehensible it's because it's exactly that: incomprehensible. There are 159 billionaires in Australia—the most there's ever been. According to Oxfam, a single average one is earning $67,000 every single hour. Just one is earning $67,000. That's the median salary, meaning that every hour these billionaires are earning what half of the workers across the country earn over an entire year. Many of these workers can barely afford their rent, mortgage, groceries or even to go to the dentist. Is this the sort of country we want to live in—one where billionaires like Clive Palmer can take home 1,300 times the typical wage while over three million people live in poverty? If your answer is 'of course not' then the next question is: how could this happen? You've just got to follow the money. Billionaires donated over $2 million to the major parties last financial year alone. That's a pretty good deal for access and influence. In fact, the opposition leader flew across the country to party with Australia's richest billionaire, Gina Rinehart, who's donated millions to the Liberal Party through the Cormack Foundation. The Liberals' track record shows exactly who they're working for: cutting penalty rates, attacking workers rights and slashing funding for public services like hospitals and public schools all while dishing out tax breaks to big corporations an…
date: 2025-02-06T09:42:00+00:00

Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
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description: That's his name, sorry. Whilst we are supporting the bill in this House, we strongly urge Labor to improve the bill by including a presumption of reimbursement and ensuring offshore tech...
encoded: That's his name, sorry. Whilst we are supporting the bill in this House, we strongly urge Labor to improve the bill by including a presumption of reimbursement and ensuring offshore tech companies are held to account. Laws to prevent and respond to scams must support the interests of people, not corporations. Labor's Scams Prevention Framework Bill could have been a much-needed opportunity to crack down on the harm caused by scams. Disappointingly, Labor has chosen to prioritise the interests of major banks and multimillion-dollar profits of those banks over the interests of everyday people. As a result, without significant amendments, the bill will fail to adequately prevent scams from occurring in the first place or support people impacted by scams to quickly seek redress. In a joint submission on the exposure draft, a broad coalition of consumer groups, including the Consumer Action Law Centre, calculated that, to seek redress for a scam, a typical person would have to go through an almost 30-step process that would take up to two years. Even worse, at the end of this process, there is no guarantee they will get any of their money back. This is because the bill places an onus on the individual to take on their bank, telco and/or social media platforms to prove that each company did not meet the requirements for the overarching principles or sector-specific code. According to the consumer groups, this is a complex, legalistic, time-draining and resource-draining task for an individual. It sets a near-impossible David-and-Goliath battle between people who have been scammed and the potentially massive corporations they have to take on. If a person manages to make it through this convoluted process, a business is only liable to reimburse them if the person can prove the business did not comply with their obligations under the framework. The Law Council of Australia indicated in their submission to the bill inquiry that the proposed laws would primarily result in comp…
date: 2025-02-06T10:40:00+00:00

Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
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description: Scams can have a devastating impact on people's lives and destroy people's lives in some instances. The Greens will be supporting the Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024 in the House because we...
encoded: Scams can have a devastating impact on people's lives and destroy people's lives in some instances. The Greens will be supporting the Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024 in the House because we have listened to key stakeholders, including many organisations that represent the interests of consumers, who are calling for the bill to be passed in this term of parliament. Australia is lagging behind other countries in our response to scams and, as a result, too many people and their families are harmed by scams each year. In 2023, tens of thousands of people across the country lost over $2.7 billion to scammers. Scams wreak havoc on so many people's lives. Australia is lucrative for scammers because Labor and the coalition have, up until this point, failed to implement a comprehensive regulatory framework, leaving it largely to industry to undertake voluntary preventive measures. As a result, protections against scams are piecemeal and inadequate, often leaving people with no avenue to recover scam losses. This is reflected in the data as currently people, not businesses, pay for 96 per cent of scam losses. Whilst we are supporting this bill in the House, we strongly urge Labor to improve the bill by including a presumption— We hear interjections from a Liberal member. Sorry, I can't remember your name. Frankly, it's astounding. You had nine years to fix this, and you have the gall to get up and lecture other people about not doing any work.
date: 2025-02-06T10:40:00+00:00

Gambling Advertising | Questions without Notice | House debates
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description: On relevance: this is a serious question. It went to gambling reform and actions on reform and cracking down on gambling advertising. The minister is making light of a serious issue that impacts...
encoded: On relevance: this is a serious question. It went to gambling reform and actions on reform and cracking down on gambling advertising. The minister is making light of a serious issue that impacts people's lives. I think the people of Australia should expect a reasonable answer. Honourable members interjecting—
date: 2025-02-05T15:04:00+00:00

Taxation: Resources Industry, Housing, Banking and Financial Services | Grievance Debate | House debates
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description: Something is terribly wrong when a nurse is paying more tax than a multinational gas corporation. In fact, in the last four years, big multinational gas corporations have paid $0 in royalties on...
encoded: Something is terribly wrong when a nurse is paying more tax than a multinational gas corporation. In fact, in the last four years, big multinational gas corporations have paid $0 in royalties on 56 per cent of all gas exported overseas from Australia. That's $143 billion in gas, and those big gas corporations paid $0 in royalties—zero! These companies included Santos and Chevron, and, by pure coincidence—I'm sure it's just a complete fluke and this occurred completely by chance—Santos and Chevron happen to have been two of the biggest donors to Labor and the Liberal Party over the last two years. Santos and Chevron have given $290,000 to the Labor Party in donations and $100,000 to the Liberals, which is a pretty good return for those two big corporations because, for instance, Santos, in recent data, in just one year made $6.2 billion in income and paid—you guessed it—$0 in tax. Over a five-year period, Chevron made $43 billion in income selling Australian gas overseas and paid—surprise, surprise—$0 in tax. Now you might think, and maybe some people will argue, that it's just really hard to tax multinational gas corporations. Maybe it's impossible and no country has figured it out—except that's just not true. While Australia exports more gas than Qatar, Qatar collects 20 times more tax from its gas than Australia does. That's 20 times more in tax collection from their gas exports when they export less than Australia. Norway taxes its oil and gas industry at an effective rate of 78 per cent and now has a sovereign wealth fund of close to $3 trillion—$2.9 trillion. In fact, just the interest on that sovereign wealth fund that they have accrued as a result of properly taxing their oil and gas industry helps fund their social programs. They give all their citizens free university education. The Greens have proposed a pretty modest increase to national gas royalties, cracking down on loopholes in the gas taxes at a federal level. Over the next 10 years, that would raise…
date: 2025-02-04T18:30:00+00:00

Climate Change | Matters of Public Importance | House debates
type: item
description: We hear the mocking over there. We are honestly getting sick of this. He is a Labor MP, by the way, who was just mocking me and laughing about that. It demonstrates the fundamental disconnect...
encoded: We hear the mocking over there. We are honestly getting sick of this. He is a Labor MP, by the way, who was just mocking me and laughing about that. It demonstrates the fundamental disconnect between this political institution and ordinary people out in the world. Because when you think about the consequences of climate change, whether it is lives lost in coal or oil and gas-driven natural disasters, whether it is devastating heatwaves, whether it is sea level rises destroying Pacific communities, whether it is the vulnerable Australians who will be hit first by this climate disaster, that is not something to mock and laugh about. That's something to take seriously. You might find that you disagree with the Greens about a bunch of things, but then go and ask all the climate scientists who say we can't open new coal and gas projects. We would be willing to work with you and discuss a reasonable pathway to phase out existing coal and gas. But, at the very least, let's agree that we can't open more of them and then hand over more billions of dollars to coal, oil and gas corporations. Listen to that passion! Where's that passion for the people who are having their lives destroyed by climate change? Where's the passion for the people who will be destroyed as a result of your party's subservience to fossil fuel corporations? (Time expired)
date: 2024-11-27T15:50:00+00:00

Climate Change | Matters of Public Importance | House debates
type: item
description: The science and experts are clear. If we want to stop devastating and catastrophic climate change, we cannot open any new coal and gas projects. It is what the International Energy Agency says,...
encoded: The science and experts are clear. If we want to stop devastating and catastrophic climate change, we cannot open any new coal and gas projects. It is what the International Energy Agency says, it is what IPCC climate scientists say and it is what experts around the world say. It is devastating and genuinely difficult to understand how members in this place can get up and pretend like this government is taking climate change seriously when this government has approved in this term of government—and wait for this—28 new coal and gas projects. Australia is the second-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world behind only Russia and ahead of the United States. That alone should be deeply shameful for a country that will face devastating consequences as a result of climate inaction—devastating. We have already experienced them. In my hometown of Brisbane, in the space of just over a decade, we have faced two one-in-100-year floods. I remember going into people's devastated homes, their lives destroyed, and one of the things I thought about is that here in parliament we have two political parties—Labor and the Liberals—who have been utterly captured by the interests of coal and gas corporations. They wield enormous power over our political system. It is not just the millions of dollars in donations that coal and gas corporations make to the two major parties. It is not just that Labor and Liberal resource ministers in the past have gone on to work for the coal, oil and gas industries—before and after their jobs, by the way. It is not just that this government time and time again sings the tune of corporations like Santos and Woodside. But even though Australia is a massive exporter of coal and gas, this country gets a fraction of that revenue in tax—a fraction. It is remarkable that corporations like Santos and Woodside sometimes pay less tax than a nurse. When you look around the world at countries like Norway that get about 60 per cent of taxation revenue from their…
date: 2024-11-27T15:50:00+00:00

Taxation | Statements by Members | House debates
type: item
description: We all only live once, but so many in my generation are being denied a chance at a good life. So much of our lives is spent working, paying huge portions of our incomes on rents or mortgages, or,...
encoded: We all only live once, but so many in my generation are being denied a chance at a good life. So much of our lives is spent working, paying huge portions of our incomes on rents or mortgages, or, worse, living out of a car. Now far too many of my generation will never know the security of owning their own home. In this parliament, over the last 2½ years, the Greens have fought hard for ordinary people, young and old, whose lives seem only to be getting harder day by day. Politics has badly failed millions of people in this country, and it's worth reflecting for a moment on a quote by, of all people, Virginia Woolf, who once reflected on the 'instinct for possession and the rage for acquisition which keeps the stockbroker and the great barrister going indoors to make money and more money and more money, when it is a fact that 500 pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine'. With those 500 pounds, she wrote, came the freedom to think and write as she pleased. These days, we certainly need a little bit more than 500 pounds a year, but the point remains. We're not asking for much, and, if we made the billionaires and big corporations finally pay their fair share, we could all have the basics we need to live a good life with security and meaning, full of the things that matter—time with family and friends, to go to the beach and, most importantly, to be alive in the sunshine. We're not asking for much, and I think we can certainly achieve that in this country.
date: 2024-11-27T13:38:00+00:00