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

The Treasurer's economic roundtable has been held as the climate is breaking down around us, as ecosystems are collapsing and in the middle of rampant economic inequality. Out of that roundtable has come a shopping list of ideas, many of which are of significant concern to the Australian Greens. One in particular is winding back regulations, which we have seen time after time from the Liberal political parties. It means weakening environmental standards and weakening environmental protections. Freezing the building code, as we have just heard—the risk there is it will increase power bills because homes will be built in a less energy efficient way, so people who live in lower-quality housing will end up paying more on their power bills, and it will increase emissions from coal and gas use. Road user charges may, if designed well, actually be very good policy, but the risk there, of course, is that it will just devolve into a tax that disincentivises the uptake of electric vehicles.

To implement the ideas out of this roundtable, the Treasurer has got a choice. Labor has a big majority in the House, and Labor plus the Greens equals the numbers in the Senate. We are up for genuinely progressive reform and will approach that in a collaborative and instructive way. What we need is for Labor to work with the Greens to end things like the obscene tax breaks that property speculators get in this country and the fossil fuel subsidies which are so unproductive to our economy, and to implement a fossil fuel export levy so we can raise revenue to help people struggling under cost-of-living pressures. (Time expired)