Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House calls on the Government to implement a 25 per cent gas export tax".

This budget fails the Australian people in many ways. I'm not saying there's no good in it. What I'm saying is it fails to meet the scale of people's needs, the needs of the moment and the boldness required to get Australia back on track. The biggest symbol of this failure is the government's decision to not include a tax on gas exports. This failure is not just significant economically; it's a failure because of what it represents. It's a failure because it shows a clear disdain from our political class towards people's clearly expressed wishes. Some people call this campaign for a gas tax populism. I prefer to call it democracy, but it seems our political class finds democracy a suspicious concept.

The failure goes deeper. The failure to listen to everyday people accelerates the decline in trust in government. This failure is a gift to One Nation. If Labor keeps failing like this, they will deliver One Nation into government. Do you think One Nation's rise will just go away? Even if they collapse tomorrow, something else will rise in its place because the conditions for One Nation's rise continue to be created by our out-of-touch political establishment.

The status quo currently defended by the Albanese Labor Party is not working for everyday people. People are starting to reject it. People are right to reject it. They are not being listened to. They are finding their lives getting tougher and tougher year on year. There needs to be a break with this unrepresentative, pro-corporate, out-of-touch status quo to turn the page really decisively on decades of deregulation, privatisation and corporate tax avoidance.

When people are feeling ignored by the political system, when they're feeling the squeeze, while they see the wealth of the top 1 per cent soar, you don't rush to defend that status quo. You don't just tinker around the edges. You say, 'Yes, it is time for real change. It's time to make the one per cent and the big corporations pay their fair share and build a society where everyone can get ahead.' That's the only way to bring people together on a different politics, other than nation's politics of division and of hate.

What's to be done? We could start right now. What better way to demonstrate a willingness to break with the status quo than to back this amendment to the budget, to implement a tax on gas corporations? What better way to show a willingness to not follow politics as usual than to break with party lines and support this eminently sensible and positive reform that people are demanding? So I'm imploring, cross the floor! Come on, just cross the floor and vote for a gas tax. I want to urge members of the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Nats and One Nation to all cross the floor. Their voters will reward them for it. I want members in this chamber to know that their voters actually want a gas tax. Their voters want to see them side with the people, not with vested interests.

I'm being completely serious. I'm imploring members of this House to not put their party's political line ahead of what their voters are clearly calling on them to do. Their party's political line has been set by the gas lobby, not even by their party's membership or even their caucus. There are Labor voters, Liberal voters, One Nation voters all out there wanting members of this House to step up and stop gas corporations from ripping us all off. Imagine being able to go to the Australian people and say, 'We're raising $17 billion extra a year; what would you like to spend it on?' There's nothing stopping members of this chamber, only the entrenched power of the corporate lobbying machine over your parties. So I'm calling on members in this chamber to cross the floor and show Australian people, their voters, that they're not just cogs in a political machine.

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