Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So many people in Australia at the moment are at breaking point, and it seems that this parliament just does not get it. The economy has been let off the leash. It is running rabid and it is starting to devour its young. We are at a tipping point in this country where the generation that is in power now is possibly, for the first time ever in peacetime, about to leave the world and the economy worse off for the generation that comes next instead of leaving it better off as should be our obligation.

We have an appalling situation at the moment. Young people in this country are almost permanently locked out of the housing market. Back in 1990, when a young person finished university, an average house cost six times the average young person's income. Fast forward a couple of decades, and it costs 12 times an average young person's income. And what happens here in Canberra? We preside over a tax system that the government will not let us change that says we will reward people who have already got their first house by giving them a tax break to buy their second, third or fourth house even if it costs us billions of dollars a year and even if it pushes the prices of property out of reach of people.

And it is not just buying; so many people have written off the idea of ever buying their own home. They are focused on renting. Even renting is becoming so unaffordable for people. If you happen to find yourself living on youth allowance because you are trying to study—and you now know you are not going to get as much for working that shift on Sunday, because the government is allowing penalty rates to be cut—you struggle now in inner-city Melbourne or inner-city Sydney to find a decent place even to rent somewhere close to where you work or where you study. And so what happens? People who are doing their degrees at the moment are living suburbs away from where they are studying, suburbs away from where they have to do weekend or night-time work, and they are spending all their time struggling to get by.

When I went to university, we shared a three-bedroom house. We each had a room. It cost us $60 a week each. That was half of Austudy as it was then. With youth allowance now you will struggle to find one bedroom in a three-bedroom share house anywhere in a capital city that is less than the cost of your whole youth allowance. And so people are forced to do things that sometimes they might not even want to do. They are forced to work hard just to get by in a way that we did not have to in previous generations.

When it comes time to look for a job when you have finished your degree or have finished school, the picture there is even worse, because we now have youth unemployment at nearly 13 per cent, more than double the general national rate. In the last 20 years, the total wealth held by young people in this country as a proportion of this country has halved. People at the top of the age spectrum who have already done well continue to do better, and it is happening at the expense of young people.

Of course there are many people right across the age spectrum who are doing it tough. We know that. We know, if you find yourself in your 50s and you have lost a job, not to look to this government for help, because this government wants you to wait weeks before you even get the dole. And then, when you try to find another job, you are going to find that pretty hard. If you try to get back into housing, especially if you happen to be a woman who gets divorced later in life, you are at risk of finding yourself homeless. That is the kind of society that we are creating and presiding over at the moment.

And it is not just happening here; it is happening right around the world. We now have the appalling situation where, as Oxfam tells us, just eight men—and they are all men—own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world. The poorest half of the world have as much wealth as the top eight men put together. Why are we in this situation where in a rich country like Australia—where we have the abundance of natural resources around the world—some people cannot find a decent job, some people cannot get a decent roof over their head and young people especially who do the right thing, who go to school, who do further study and who then go to look for a job find themselves living hand to mouth, getting casual work—contract work—and unable to find a place to rent and unable to find a place to buy?

The economy is turning toxic. The last three decades have seen governments—it does not matter whether it is Labor or Liberal in this country—tell us that it is not the job of government to govern and look after people and make sure the economy works for people. They tell us that they are going to stand back and let it rip. If it moves, lock it up; if it doesn't, sell it off. Sell off the Commonwealth Bank. Make sure that health is something that the government does not look after but something you have to take out private health insurance for, even if it costs the budget billions of dollars and just pushes the cost of health care up and up. Sell off all our electricity networks and then act surprised when power becomes unaffordable for people.

Why is it that we are in this situation where not only has anything that is a public essential service been handed over to the private sector and turned into a commodity but, more than that, under Labor and Liberal for the last 30 years, citizens have been turned into competitors and consumers? I am not a passenger on a tram anymore; I am a customer who the operator hopes enjoys their transport experience. We have all been forced into this situation where we have to incur bigger and bigger debts to get through university or TAFE or just to stay alive, and then we are pitted against each other and asked to compete, and told that if at the end of our working life we find ourselves without enough money to retire on it is our own fault for not investing enough in superannuation.

People have had enough. People cannot understand why we are living in such an amazing country where we should be able to look after each other and yet are told day by day that, no, we have to have more cuts to welfare, we are going to have more cuts to wages. Why? So that we can give the big four banks a tax cut of about $7 billion. Just in the last week or so the Commonwealth Bank said that it had made a profit of $4.9 billion. The banks in Australia, the big banks, are the most profitable in the world, and this government says, 'Wouldn't it be a good idea if we gave them an extra tax cut of $7 billion. Oh, by the way, we don't have enough money so that you can go and see the doctor anymore and we're going to have to ask you to pay a bit more to go to university.' The government says, 'We're quite happy to find billions of dollars a year to prop up people who've got several investment properties but we can't find our way to building some more-affordable housing for all of you to have.'

This is reaching breaking point. If you want to know why One Nation is doing so well right across the country, it is not because they espouse racist rhetoric, because in many ways that goes against what so many people in Australia stand for. It is because they are peddling false solutions to the people who are feeling real pain, to the people of Australia who are saying, 'Why is it that I can't get a decent job when I've done the right thing? Why is it that industries are moving offshore from Labor and Liberal governments who've said it's not their responsibility to keep jobs here?' They are angry, and we need to listen to the fact that these people are angry, not just in our regions, not just in our outer suburbs, but right in the inner city as well.

So many people know that we are at a tipping point and they are looking for some alternatives. That is why Bernie Sanders did so well and struck a chord. It shows us that there is a way of dealing with the problems that are facing us without resorting to racism, without saying, 'We're going to pick a particular group and blame them,' but it requires a bit of courage. If we are really going to tackle inequality, if we are going to make Australia feel like it is a place where everyone has a place, if we are going to make this a place where you get good health care, you get a good education and you have the right to a roof over your head as a right, not depending on your income, we are going to need to stand up to the powerful. For too long, this parliament has been acting in the interests of a powerful few and not in the interests of the public. We need to change that.