Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This Sunday just gone, on International Women's Day, I spent time with some truly remarkable women. One of them was the formidable Gen Dawson-Scott, who is contesting the seat of Heysen in the South Australian state election. Gen is an early childhood educator, a young mum and a powerful advocate for her community, and will hopefully soon be a member of the South Australian parliament.

When it comes to early learning, what are the Greens working towards, from Heysen to Horsham to Hobart? The Greens want a shared commitment to building a genuinely high-quality, affordable and accessible early education system—one that truly operates like a public service, just like primary and secondary school. Early education is one of the great equalisers that we have in society. It sets up children for success in school and in life but it also opens doors for parents, especially women who disproportionately face barriers to re-entering the workforce. When families have access to early education they can trust, whether that's long day care, kindergarten, preschool, family day care or in-home care, women gain real choice—the choice to return to the workforce, the choice to study, the choice to stay home, the choice on what path is right for them and their families.

A strong early education benefits everyone, but right now the Prime Minister's so-called legacy is failing women by withholding that choice. Access to quality early learning is a postcode lottery in this country, and the dominance of for-profit providers—companies led by men on million-dollar salaries—is draining public subsidy into corporate profits. At the same time, the system is propped up by a feminised workforce and educators who show up every single day doing incredible skilled and important work under conditions that still fail to recognise their true value. I am fortunate to have incredible women in my life who support me and inspire me, I'm fortunate that my young children can attend early education that I love and trust, and I'm fortunate to stand in this place and represent women and girls in my home state of Victoria. But these things simply shouldn't come down to good fortune.

Those of us who have had these opportunities have a responsibility to send the ladder down, and there are many ways we can be doing that right now. Extending paid parental leave to 12 months, as the Greens have long called for, would give families real choice in those vital first months of a child's life. Twenty-six weeks at minimum wage simply isn't enough. Serious paid parental leave, along with increasing income support above the poverty line, would help close the gender pay gap, reduce the number of women retiring in poverty and strengthen women's economic security. There is much to celebrate this International Women's Day but there is also much more work to be done, and many of us here can only show up to our work because our early childhood educators show up to theirs.

When conflict erupts, it is overwhelmingly women and children who pay the highest price. The UN estimates that women and children make up 90 per cent of casualties in modern conflicts. War is not gender neutral, yet for more than a week now we have watched an illegal invasion of Iran driven by powerful men unleashing violence and weapons on civilian populations. What we are seeing from our own government comes from an all-too-familiar playbook—deflection, manipulation and gaslighting day by day.

Australia's involvement in this illegal conflict is being quietly normalised. First it was just words of praise; our Prime Minister rushed to back his mate Donald Trump, eager to prove Australia belongs in the global warmongers boys club. Maybe our intelligence infrastructure helped enable the attack. Maybe a US war plane refuelled on Australian soil. But we were told not to ask questions; we were labelled as divisive for asking the questions that our communities rightly want and expect us to ask in this place. Are we joining another US forever war? It is a pretty bloody simple question and it warrants a straightforward answer. So spare us the theatre. It's classic political gaslighting—convince the public that this conflict is inevitable, convince us that there's no peaceful alternative, trot out the tried and tested 'weapons of mass destruction' line and hope that the public will fall for it. Well, they're not falling for it and the Greens are not falling for it.

This week, we see a predictable escalation: Australian war machines being deployed. Nearly a hundred Australian military personnel will be sent to the gulf. 'Don't worry,' they tell us, 'it's just a defensive deployment,' when we know that it will free up US aircraft for more destruction. What does next week bring? Boots on the ground? More weapons flowing to overseas militaries? Where exactly is this government's red line? It's certainly not the bombing of a school, killing over 150 schoolgirls. It's clearly not the 700,000 people displaced in Lebanon by Israeli air strikes or the selective view on where international law applies and where it doesn't. Australians deserve the truth, not weasel words from Trump's playbook.

… I do not believe it is in Australia's national interest … to be joining any military action that would undermine the legitimacy and supremacy of international law.

Those aren't my words. They're the now Prime Minister Albanese's words. He said in this parliament:

… we must continue to tell them—

the US—

that unilateralism can never be the basis of a satisfactory world model …

Oh, how times have changed! We're watching, in live time, how power corrupts. Labor used to believe Australians deserve a say in whether this country is dragged into an illegal, never-ending war. You cannot gaslight a country into complicity. Australia must not be pulled deeper into an endless war. We must stand for peace.

Finally, from the moment I began this speech to the moment I finish it, Australia will have missed out on roughly $323,000 in public revenue—$323,000 that could have been taxed from the more than 1,300 tonnes of LNG exported off our shores in just 10 minutes. Over a year, that adds up to a whopping $17 billion in public revenue lost, all because Australia has failed, for decades, to meaningfully tax its gas exports.

Last night, in this chamber, we heard some of the usual talking points, so familiar I wasn't sure if I was in the Parliament of Australia or at a Woodside investors meeting. Members dutifully repeated the lines of the gas lobby, defending inflated claims about how much this industry supposedly contributes to our economy. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the $103,000 the coalition received from the Australian Energy Producers last year—a bit of loose change, hey? But the truth is simple. No amount of spin can hide the failures of the petroleum resource rent tax. Our broken PRRT has collected next to nothing from gas exports for years, after decades of loopholes that allow these multinational companies to extract our resources and report massive profits, all while paying next to no tax. It's billions of dollars Australians should have received, billions that could help to clean up the climate damage that these companies leave behind, billions that could fund a truly universal childcare system in this country, billions that could extend paid parental leave many times over and billions that could compensate Australians who have watched domestic energy prices triple since gas exports began, while helping accelerate a fast and fair transition away from toxic gas altogether.

Instead, the gas industry spends millions of dollars on lobbying and glossy advertising. You've probably seen the billboards on the way to the airport: 'Australia runs on gas'. At the same time, the industry claimed that it somehow singlehandedly funded Medicare, when the reality is that it's groups like teachers, nurses and retail workers who collectively pay more tax on their incomes than Australia collects from gas exports. What a shame.

Here's the thing: industries only spend millions on public relations campaigns when they're afraid, and they are afraid. They're afraid of becoming irrelevant, afraid of the public finally understanding their role in the climate crisis and afraid Australians might just realise how badly they're being ripped off, because Australia doesn't run on gas; Australia runs on nurses, on teachers and on everyday workers. It increasingly runs on renewable energy—thank goodness for that—and it should run on a fair return for the resources that belong to all of us. They belong to every Australian; they do not belong to these gas cartels. So to Santos, Woodside, INPEX, Chevron and the lobby groups that speak for them and are crawling the halls of this parliament: Australians are waiting for you to finally pay what you owe.