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

I move the motion standing in Senator Payman's name:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Australian Government to address the increasing accessibility and affordability issues that are preventing Australian families from accessing quality early childhood education and care by imposing a 25% tax on gas exports".

It's not all that often that two of my favourite topics—quality education and care and taxing greedy corporations—converge in this place, but I guess today's my lucky day. Yesterday, we took a significant step towards what the Australian public agrees makes sense, what experts know make sense, what pretty much everyone knows makes sense except for the major parties, One Nation and, of course, the gas lobby. Our inquiry into the taxation of Australia's gas resources will be short and sharp, but it will dig deep. It will dig into the excuses that massive gas corporations have used for decades—excuses that successive weak governments have used for decades to avoid paying what they owe on tax on exports. Our message is simple: the free ride's over.

Australians are fed up with the gas industry's greed. They are fed up with a system where multinational corporations make billions exporting our resources while people at home are struggling to pay their bills. And they are fed up. They have absolutely had a gutful of Labor's refusal to take on these corporations and to tax them properly. This is money that belongs to the Australian public. It should be helping people afford the basics and transition off gas, not padding the profits of some soft wealthiest companies in the world.

A minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports would raise at least $17 billion every year. That is $17 billion a year that we are currently missing out on, 17 billion bucks that could be used to improve people's lives, to improve our energy security and to compensate households, because this inquiry comes at a crunch moment. The gas cartel is poised to cash in on global conflict—blood-soaked dollars—while Australians are being smashed with rising costs at home. These companies are rubbing their hands together with glee as prices surge. And the revenue we're talking about—there's no shortage of ways it could be used: immediate cost-of-living relief, free public transport, rapid electrification to protect households from exactly this kind of global energy shock in future, or even—I don't know—free, universal, high-quality early education and care.

Today the Senate Education and Employment Committee has also tabled its report into the quality and safety of early childhood education and care, an inquiry initiated by the Greens. Over the past year the sector has been through one of its most difficult periods. Families have been through one of their most difficult periods. We have seen serious safety failures, an exhausted and underpaid workforce, and families being priced out of the system they desperately depend on. At a moment like this we need bold structural reform. Instead, we've been given a report from a Liberal-controlled committee that barely tinkers at the edges. It's a disgrace. It focuses on short-term fixes while sidestepping the core issue: early learning in this country is still treated as a cash cow, not a public service.

Until we confront that, until we stop putting profits before kids, we'll be letting families and children down across this country. Just as we guarantee universal access to schoolchildren, we should be building a universal, high-quality early learning system—one that works for every child, every family and every educator. The Greens' dissenting report, which I am proud to have tabled, sets out a different path. It calls for a national ECEC commission—real action to lift wages, measures to rein in excessive profiteering and a clear transition to a universal system.

And $17 billion in tax from the greedy gas corporations could deliver truly universal, high-quality early childhood education and care. We can afford it, but it will require this captured government to stare down the vested interests that call the shots and finally put Australian families first. If we had the courage to take on the gas cartel and implement a fair export tax, we could fund the services Australians rely on. We could ease the pressure on households and we could finally build systems like early education that are designed for people, not for profit. This is a moment for people to pick a side. The Greens know which side we are on, and it sure as hell isn't the side of the gas cartels.