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

We are in a cost-of-living crisis, but we can't tackle it unless we actually admit what's driving it: corporate greed lifting the prices of everything. Big corporations are making record profits. The two big supermarkets are making record profits, the big energy corporations are making massive profits, and the big banks are making record profits passing on interest rate rises.

But what's Labor's solution? Leave it to the Reserve Bank. But the Reserve Bank has only one move. It's sociopathic, and Labor's backing it—whack up interest rates and force people who have just purchased a home and renters to pay even more. This plan will deliberately force over 100,000 more people into unemployment, but it won't tackle corporate profiteering. Accord to Labor's 'leave it to the RBA' plan, rents are going to increase by 10 per cent over the next year and the cost of everything else is going to go up by over five per cent.

You can't tackle the cost-of-living crisis without tackling the corporations that are putting up the prices. We need to make these big corporations pay their fair share of tax. We need a proper superprofits tax and a proper mining tax, and we could use the money raised to raise the rate of income support, wipe student debt and freeze rents and mortgages. If we actually tackled corporate profiteering and greed, we could reduce inflation and the cost of living. If the corporations paid their fair share, everyone would be better off. Make the big corporations pay.