Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Another year, another Labor budget with more missed opportunities than an under-7s soccer match. Back in the early 2020s—you know, the olden days—some might have been surprised by a budget doing so little for ordinary people and so much for Labor's big-business donors, gas companies and lobbyist mates. But over five budgets, Prime Minister Albanese, Treasurer Chalmers and the crew have lowered the bar to a point that it is now buried. That is how low the bar is. It is buried right beside millions of Australians' hopes of meaningful change, for action on the cost-of-living, housing and climate crises.

Let's take a brief tour of the missed opportunities this time around. The budget confirms the government is cruelly cutting $37 billion from the NDIS. Disabled people shouldn't suffer just because Labor want to prove they can be just as callous as the Liberals. If there were any moral courage on the government benches, they would listen to community members who have raised the alarm about the impacts of cuts and do the right thing—reverse course and fully fund the NDIS.

For uni students, there is no reprieve either. Labor would love you to think the eye-watering cost of university degrees is the fault of Scott Morrison's so-called Job-ready Graduates fee hikes. But let's be real. The absurd fees that are driving the cost of arts degrees to higher than $50,000 are now firmly Labor's responsibility. The Liberals fee hiked for 16 months; Labor has now kept them high for more than 47 months. These are their fee hikes through and through, and the responsibility of loading students up with debt they may never be able to pay off in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis sits squarely with this Labor government.

Meanwhile, communities around the country are living with rising hate, threats and violence, yet completely absent from the budget was any funding to start implementing the National Anti-Racism Framework. Yes, it will require investment but, in the scheme of things, it will be a drop in the ocean—the same ocean, I might add, that Labor is trying to fill with US nuclear subs at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. After 18 months of silence and delay, the budget was their chance to get on with the practical steps the framework sets out to tackle racism, push back against online hate, strengthen community safety, and centre truth telling and justice for First Nations people. The forces of hate cannot be ignored or placated. If anyone in this government thinks racists will be mollified by burying antiracism funding then they should know they are playing directly into the hands of the far right.

This parliament should be a place that confronts injustice and stands together against it. We deserve better. The planet deserves better too. The world is on fire, hurtling towards climate catastrophe, and this government is cutting climate funding—$4 billion of climate funding—and backing in fossil fuel subsidies. It is the groundswell of anger and passion in the community that the Greens choose to side with. Some Labor MPs want to pretend that the tinkering in this budget is a gift to young people, like these tax changes that let big property investors off the hook. To those MPs, my message is clear: there is no secret number of Instagram reels that you can post to make houses cheaper. There is no 'tragically cringe' AI meme that can curb emissions or ease the sting of heartless NDIS cuts. You have to listen to people, and you have to front up with policies that meaningfully improve their lives. You have not done that. By that standard, this budget is a wholly missed opportunity and an abject failure.