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

Well, we are indeed in a cost-of-living crisis in Australia, and it's worth pointing out that that crisis is making life much, much harder for an ever-increasing number of Australians. There are many reasons for this crisis. Inflation is certainly one of those reasons, and the Greens absolutely accept that some of the reasons we are seeing such a spike in inflation in Australia are international issues. But it is worth pointing out that one of the global reasons that we are seeing pressure come onto prices is climate change, and this Labor government is one of the most fossil fuel addicted governments in the world. They want to open up 114 new coal or gas developments in Australia, and the Greens will fight them all the way on every single one of those proposals.

But domestically, in terms of pressures on inflation, we cannot have this discussion without accepting the role that corporate profiteering is having on driving prices up in this country. And it's worth having everyone in this place understand that when you overlay climate change on top of 40-plus years of turbocharged neoliberalism in this country you are starting to see our very social fabric being torn. The social contract that keeps us, in the main, as a peaceful and coherent society is starting to crack. If you can't feel it cracking under your feet now, colleagues, then I can only say, you are not paying enough attention, because that social contract is starting to crack. Unless we actually take action on things like the breakdown of our climate, unless we take action on things like the sixth mass extinction event in the history of our planet, unless we start to reverse the turbocharged neoliberalism in this country—where people who are deliberately left without work in an attempt to suppress wages are forced into poverty and starvation, in some cases—the social fabric will continue to crumble.

There used to be an understanding in this country that if you worked hard and got yourself a good education and a reasonable job you could prosper, get ahead and make a good life for yourself and your family. Through collective bargaining and through industrial action, workers demanded and won better pay and conditions. Governments built public housing and provided a roof over the heads of people who could not afford homes of their own. But that understanding, that social contract, between the people and the government is being taken apart piece by piece by the neoliberal parties in this place.

For young people in particular, hard work matters far, far less than the wealth of their parents. And we are seeing the new class division in this country. That class division is whether or not you own property. If you own property, you're doing very nicely, thank you very much, and you have been for decades. If you don't own property, or your parents don't own enough property to bequeath to you at some stage in your life, you are condemned. That's the new class divide in this country. We've got wages flatlining. The Treasurer was up in the House just last week telling Australians to brace for their real wages to fall. The cost of renting is skyrocketing; the cost of buying a new home is skyrocketing.

This is a rigged game, and it's rigged in favour of the super wealthy, the billionaires and those who profit from the big corporations. What governments have done is design a system where the only hope of social advancement is through property investment, and now that ladder is being pulled away as well by rampant interest rate rises from a RBA governor who told people that rates wouldn't rise until 2024. Those people who believed him and bought a home are getting smashed because they believed the RBA governor.