Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I second the amendment. Four months ago, I was working in a retail job in the suburbs of north Brisbane. I was making about $55,000 a year, just above the median wage in Australia. At times, I and many of my colleagues lived pay cheque to pay cheque. I have countless memories of us sitting around the break room talking about our financial stresses, such as making rent or finding a doctor that would bulk-bill, and complaining about toothaches and being unable to afford a dentist. Frequently, single parents would be forced to choose between working a shift or utilising child care. Not working a shift lost them income, but utilising child care was the more expensive option.

These conversations were not unique to my former workplace. They happen in break rooms and at worksites around the country. All of us know that things shouldn't be this hard and that something is very wrong. No-one should be putting off visiting the dentist because of the cost or living in constant fear of not being able to afford rent. And yet, for millions of Australians, this is the reality. To combat these issues—rising inflation, spiralling healthcare costs, rent stress and interest rate hikes—what is the government's response to my former colleagues? The stage 3 tax cuts: a $269 tax cut for my former colleagues and a $9,000 tax cut each year for CEOs and politicians.

The Labor government tells us that tough decisions will have to be made in this year's budget. But when it comes to supporting tax cuts for the very, very wealthy—these are not hard decisions. The now government voted for these cuts at their introduction. They made the decision to support bad legislation then and they have doubled down on it now. When I asked a question in question time, the Treasurer could not give me a single reason why these tax cuts were good for the economy. I don't even think the government wants to keep them. They are now in a wedge of their own making.

Every day I am contacted by constituents who cannot fathom the government's decision to not repeal these cuts, and I can't give them a good answer. They didn't make sense when the government voted for them, they don't make sense today and they won't make sense in 2024. We need courage. We need the government to show everyday Australians that it is really on their side. The government wants to pretend that it is powerless to stop terrible coalition policy, but it is not. It has the majority in this House, and it would have the support of the Greens both here and in the Senate to repeal these tax cuts.

The government often talks about its legacy—Medicare, the PBS and so on—but this will be Labor's new legacy. It will be known as a government of tax cuts to the rich at the expense of meaningfully raising income support, JobSeeker, the pension and the DSP. It will be known as a government that legislates people into poverty. It will be known as a government that looks at the cost-of-living crisis and thinks, 'Politicians need a tax cut.'

It is that simple. Our essential public services are funded by taxation. If the government wants to rip out over $200 billion of revenue, cuts to public services will have to be made. There are no two ways about it. The government has the nerve to claim these tax cuts will mean more in people's hip pockets, but how will it reconcile this with the fact that these cuts will have to be paired with essential services becoming harder to access and more expensive? Right now, it is getting more and more difficult to find a bulk-billing GP, our healthcare system is at crisis point, higher education is becoming out of reach, and students are saddled with over $60 billion in debt. How can the government possibly plan to address this with a $200 billion plus gap in the budget?

This is a natural consequence of the government's commitment to neoliberalism and the hollowing out of public services. This is the government suggesting that the very richest people in Australia will solve the cost-of-living crisis out of the goodness of their hearts, despite all of history pointing to the contrary. This did not happen during the Great Depression, and it did not happen during the global financial crisis. It is said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce. The coalition's policies consign them to irrelevance in this parliament; why does the government want to follow in their footsteps?

It seems I'm expected to go back and tell my former co-workers that, despite their financial stress and despite the universal acceptance that our economic system is broken, we can't afford to fix their problems. It's a lie. We can. We have solutions ready to go. They are solutions that have precedent. They already exist in countries around the world. They can be done. Why should Australians be left behind?

In the past we have been bold and courageous enough to transform our country for the better. I am here because of the community's hope for a better future and to put a stop to politics as usual. We can get dental and mental health into Medicare. We can make child care free. We can wipe student debt. We can freeze rents for two years. It's just that the Labor government would rather give themselves a tax cut.

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