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

Well, memo to the Labor Party: people voted for change at the last election. What that means is that they wanted the government to be different to the former government. What they've got is a Prime Minister who more and more, every day, looks like a pale version of the former Prime Minister. They've got a Prime Minister who jets overseas to hand over $368 billion in a new submarine deal where he is, as former Prime Minister Keating said, the only one paying. Of course, it's Australian taxpayers who are actually paying. They've got a Labor Party that is pushing ahead with the $250 billion worth of tax cuts for the wealthy that were put on the table by the former Prime Minister, Mr Morrison. They've got a Labor Party that is pushing ahead with the safeguard mechanism, a policy of the former Liberal-National government designed to fail.

All the while, interest rates are going up, in direct contravention of a promise made by the RBA, and real wages are going backwards at the fastest rate on record—faster than they were going backwards under the former government. How can the Labor Party look the people who voted for them in the eye and defend tax cuts for the wealthy and expenditure of $368 billion on nuclear submarines? They are ghastly, indefensible policies. They perpetuate social injustice and they will make it harder for everyday Australians to get by.

Poverty doesn't have to exist in this country. It is a political choice that poverty exists in this country, and it is a choice that wasn't only made by the Liberal-National coalition, who I would expect to make that choice every time. It's now a choice being made by the Australian Labor Party, because they would prefer to give tax cuts to the wealthy than to end the prospect of someone starving on income support in this country. That's how far the Labor Party have fallen.