Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Before I go to the substance of this debate, I would just like to address something that Senator Walsh said in her speech. She expressed concerns about appropriating funds. In fact, we're not actually debating an appropriation here. We're debating what to do with money that has actually already been appropriated. So if that's the only excuse that the Labor Party has for not supporting the Greens this evening then they can rest assured that in fact that's not a concern. They can set their minds at rest and, as I said, if that's their only excuse for not supporting us then we now look forward to their support for this motion.

What we do know is that the Treasurer announced, late on a Friday afternoon—when you take out the trash in Australian politics—that the JobKeeper program would cost $60 billion less than expected. When you say it quickly, $60 billion doesn't sound like a lot of money but, believe me, that is an awful lot of money that could be put to an awful lot of good uses! Unfortunately for so many people, and for our economy, the government has not committed to reinvest the money. In fact they are effectively celebrating this underspend.

The Australian Greens have a diametrically opposed position, and that is that this is $60 billion of forgone economic stimulus. We also believe that the government making the decision not to spend this money will massively impact on so many people who desperately need support. There is a range of people who I would include in that category: many artists and creative workers; so many temporary visa holders, including international students; casual workers who have worked less than 12 months continuously for their current employer; and people who work for universities. The list goes on.

But here's what the Greens are proposing: expand JobKeeper eligibility to casual employees, including those casual employees currently not eligible due to less than 12 months of continuous service with their current employer. We also would like to see it extended to employees on temporary visas. We'd like to see it expanded to include intermittent employees, who've missed out due to the fixed 1 March start date and the nature of their contracts. We'd also like to see it expanded to cover employees of higher education providers such as universities, which have been explicitly excluded from JobKeeper, through adjustments to their turnover test. We'd also like to see it expanded to employees of foreign government owned entities that are resident in Australia—the example being dnata, an airport services provider that is 100 per cent owned by the state government of Dubai; it has been excluded from JobKeeper on that basis. Outside the JobKeeper program, we also have plenty of people in this country who are on Newstart and who need to have the rate of Newstart retained so that people are not condemned to live a life of abject poverty. There are a range of really important measures that could be taken by this government in regard to that $60 billion which would not only stimulate the economy but massively improve the opportunity for so many people to actually live a good life in this country.

I want to talk a little bit about temporary visa holders. I well recall the Prime Minister flippantly saying to temporary visa holders early on in the pandemic, 'It's time to go home.' He said it was time to go home, ignoring the fact that, for many temporary visa holders, this was simply not an option at the time, and it remains not an option for them today. This is like inviting some guests around to your home and then, when the going gets a little bit tough, booting them out on the street. Temporary visa holders are guests in our country. We've asked them to come in. We ought to be showing them hospitality. We ought to be supporting them in these really, really difficult times, and the sight of international students forming long queues in some of our capital cities over the last month or two has been absolutely heart-wrenching. These people have basically been kicked out onto the street and left to starve by this government.

I make the point that when, a few years ago, the government cut the SRSS payment, the Status Resolution Support Services payment, for people seeking asylum in this country, when they cut them off from housing support and employment support and when they cut them off from social security payments, that set the tone. The government thought, 'We've gotten away with that one, so let's see if we can get away with it again.' Well, they won't get away with it while the Australian Greens remain in this place to be a voice for so many of those people.

Of course, there are people on protection visas, whom I just spoke about. There are international students, people on working visas and people on visitor visas who may be stuck here either due to a lack of funds or as a result of travel bans that prevent them from leaving Australia and returning to a safe country. The government's response to temporary visa holders in Australia during this pandemic has been cruel and callous. They've been sentenced to poverty, hunger and destitution by a government that just simply doesn't care about their welfare, despite inviting them into our country as our guests.

We'd expect other countries to look after Australians who are stuck over there and unable to return to Australia, so why aren't we doing better at looking after foreign nationals who are guests in our country during a very difficult time for people around the world? There are currently over two million people who hold valid temporary visas to be in Australia, and the government has a responsibility to provide income support at a time like this for those people.

I also want to take this opportunity to issue a warning—that is, and this is plain as day what we are facing, we are going to see a massive effort of austerity from this government. They will say: we need to cut the budget to put it back in balance. Now, let's leave the argument aside for a minute about whether that is actually true or not. But we know we're staring down the barrel of deep austerity because that's the only way the Liberals know. They're going to gut our public services. They're going to turn public debt into private debt for people who cannot afford to carry that debt. They're going to punish people who need support, just as they have for so many years, by keeping the Newstart payment so low and they are going to drive more people into destitution and despair. And they're going to do it despite the fact that so many major corporations in this country who profit so obscenely in Australia still pay little or, in many cases, no tax whatsoever.

We're going to see it, despite the fact that every budget that is handed down contains over $20 billion in direct subsidies to people who burn fossil fuels in the middle of a climate emergency. We're going to see let-it-rip environmental destruction to fatten the profits of the environmental vandals, whether they be the coalminers, the gas frackers, the native forest destroyers. You watch: this public money will be shovelled into those companies and those corporations so they can maintain their obscene profit levels while nature, as ever, pays such a heavy price. We'll see tax dodgers being given more chances to avoid paying what they owe.

Australia, the people of Australia and the Australian environment cannot afford the pain of the looming Liberal austerity agenda. And we need to fight against this austerity because of the harm it will cause to so many people who are struggling, to so many people who need support. There are many other ways, as I alluded to earlier: making big corporations pay their fair share of tax; ending the rampant fossil fuel subsidies that exist in every budget. If the Liberals are so concerned about balancing a budget, I encourage them to force the big fossil fuel companies, the big corporates, in this country to pay their fair share of tax. In fact, I do more than encourage them: I demand that that is what they do.

Because we do have an opportunity to re-imagine this country. We do have an opportunity to make sure that we don't go back to the way it used to be because the way it used to be was so bad and so difficult for so many people. And when we re-imagine what Australia could look like, we can think about what a Green New Deal would look like for this country—a Green new deal which has, as a foundation, respect for nature and significant government investment to improve the lives of people and to start to repair some of the massive environmental harm that has been caused for so many decades in this country, and create jobs, wealth and opportunity for people while we do it.

Those are the opportunities before us, colleagues. Those are the opportunities that we should seize collectively now. Because we can do things better than the way we did them before. The Australian Greens don't want to see us go back to exactly the way it used to be because, as I said, the way it used to be was simply too hard, too difficult, for too many people. So let's work collectively to seize those opportunities. Let's work collectively to make sure that, as we do provide that economic stimulus, it's in areas where we can use those funds, those $60 billion that are now available that we thought we would have to spend but now know that we don't. Let's use them to repair nature. Let's use them to protect nature. Let's use them to reforest and rewild. Let's use them to create jobs, wealth and opportunity for more people. Let's use them to support so many Australians who've done it far too tough for far too long.