Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This budget is what it looks like when a government stops working for people and starts working for the one per cent. After Labor being in power for nearly four years, it's starting to dawn on people that Labor are content to keep letting everyone down. Across the country, people are angry. Despite having a massive majority in the lower house and a dysfunctional opposition, Labor is wasting everyone's time. People are working harder, paying more and falling further behind, while the one per cent—the giant corporations, the ultrawealthy billionaires and the professional property investors—just get richer.

Labor's fifth budget fails to include a tax on gas exports, which would have been worth at least $17 billion in revenue. Instead, Labor has chosen to gut services, including the NDIS, to cut climate programs and clean energy manufacturing and to keep people on poverty-level income support. We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Housing is unaffordable. People are struggling. Yet the Treasurer announced last night that the biggest cost-of-living measure in this budget—the working Australians tax offset—equates to $4.81 a week and you won't start getting it until 2028.

This is a government that is just not up to the job. They are not governing for people; they are governing for big corporations and billionaires—the one per cent. There's no money for essential services, but there's billions to buy additional weapons off Donald Trump. There's no funding to build public housing, but wealthy property investors get to keep their tax handouts. There's no money for household electrification. In fact, there's $4 billion being cut from climate transition and there's $5 million to open up new gas fields. They are kicking 160,000 people off the NDIS, but they could not possibly introduce a gas tax. There's nothing for renters. There's no new money to build housing, unless you count the $110 billion for UK and US troops under AUKUS. And their ambitious reforms to negative gearing and capital gains discounts? They look more and more like a damp squib. The housing tax changes just grandfather inequality. They protect the unfair wealth hoarding of wealthy multiproperty investors and the one per cent. The changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax will still give tens of billions of dollars to wealthy property investors to outbid renters at auctions every weekend.

The test for Labor is whether the housing crisis starts to ease. If it doesn't fix the housing crisis, Labor will be explaining that at the next election. Tinkering around the edges of a broken housing system and spending billions for corporations and the one per cent will be the legacy of the Albanese Labor government. This was an opportunity to show Australians that parliament can actually work for them and improve their lives. Instead, Labor chose cowardice. It chose corporate comfort over structural reform.

Big corporations are making massive profits. Billionaires are increasing their wealth. Everyone else is going backwards. Over the last decade, corporate profits in Australia have grown almost double the rate of wages. While Australian billionaires increase their wealth by $600,000 a day each, over a million people are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. While one in three big corporations are paying zero tax, working people are falling further behind, struggling to keep their heads above water.

Budgets are about choices, and in this one it was so simple: stand up to the one per cent and work for ordinary people, or protect the profits of big corporations and the ultrawealthy. Labor chose the one per cent. They could have made people's lives better. They could have made the one per cent pay their fair share. They could have taxed gas. They could have protected the NDIS. But they didn't. And after the Treasurer finished his budget speech last night he attended, as he does every year, a series of fundraisers with representatives of big corporations. That is who Labor is working for—who this budget is for, who benefits from the economic mismanagement of this government. It is not a budget for the people. It is a budget for the coal and gas corporations, for the gambling corporations, for the property industry and for the big banks—for the people who are already making billions of dollars each year.

No wonder people are fed up. They're fed up because Labor was the first government in the world to back in this illegal war with Iran. It's this illegal war that is fuelling the cost-of-living crisis, and it's fuelling billions of dollars of extra profits for gas corporations. As the illegal war fuels inflation and economic inequality, Labor's budget needed to choose a side: deliver for people, or deliver for corporate profits and the wealthy few. If we taxed the profits of these greedy gas corporations and invested in the things people need, it would bring down inflation and help ease interest rates. Instead, Labor is protecting the profits of the big corporations and making the people pay. Instead of making big corporations pay, Labor is cruelly cutting the NDIS. Labor's cut to the NDIS is the biggest cut to any government services program this century.

This budget represents a tipping point for the Albanese Labor government. In the UK and the USA we've seen what happens when people are fed up because politicians back the one per cent. This government is not concerned with inequality. It's concerned with appearances. It pays lip service. That's why people are fed up. They're fed up because Labor could do something about the problems people face but they waste every opportunity. People are sick and tired of the tinkering, the cowardice, the weakness and the wasted time. People are sick of the gas industry getting the gas they're flogging off for free and not paying their fair share. They're sick of rents going up and up while wages fall behind. They're sick of worrying about whether their kids will be able to afford a home.

And here's the thing: Australia's economic system is broken. In the past, people were able to get ahead. Wages kept up with the cost of living. Housing was affordable. Essential services were owned and run for the public, not for the profits of the one per cent. Over the last decade, corporate profits have doubled. The wealth of Australian billionaires grew by more than $29 million per day last year, and the top one per cent now holds more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent. If you're a teacher, a plumber, a nurse or a hospo worker you're paying a higher rate of tax on your wage than big corporations and the ultrawealthy are paying on their extreme wealth.

The one per cent aren't just accumulating wealth. They are buying political power. Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals—and One Nation, for that matter—are all funded by big corporations and billionaires. One Nation's rise in the polls isn't happening in a vacuum. It is getting harder to get by, and people are right to be angry. But Senator Pauline Hanson's explanation that immigrants and outsiders are to blame is pure self-interest. It's to protect her own ties with billionaires like Gina Rinehart. In the last 10 years Labor, the coalition and One Nation have taken a quarter of a billion dollars in donations from big corporations. These politicians then walk into parliament and make laws that help the super-rich get even richer and help corporations avoid paying tax. Then, after the budget, they all go for drinks together.

It doesn't have to be like this. Either we act now or our kids will never be able to afford to buy a home. If we taxed the one percent, we could fund public services like dental in Medicare, like wiping student debt and like funding the NDIS properly. Right now, the one percent of this country are running the country while the 99 per cent are doing all the work. It's no wonder people are fed up.

This budget cements Labor's legacy—a government who offers people less than the bare minimum and tells them to accept their declining standard of living. Back in Gough's day, Labor represented working people. Now people are getting left behind, and they're not being heard. This government think they can get away with it because the Liberals are useless, but it is not good enough. We demand better. Millions of people demand better. We can do better. These guys work for the one per cent. We're working for you. (Time expired)