Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to have the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate's 2021-22 budget reply speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

INTRODUCTION

The Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Albanese, grew up in a council house in Camperdown, the only son of a single mum on the disability pension.

He stood before the House of Representatives – and the Australian people - tonight seeking the honour of serving as Prime Minister.

He was able to do that because of sacrifices his mum made, to give him chances she was denied by disadvantage – he will never forget that.

And he was able to do that because good government changed his life.

For him – and for so many people in similar circumstances – the policies and decisions of good government made all the difference.

A good government, building a strong economy and a fair society, opens the door to education, to employment, to decent housing, to proper health care, to a better life.

He lived that as a young man.

And he saw it firsthand as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure: creating jobs, connecting-up communities, boosting productivity in our cities and our regions.

He understands the value and the power of good government.

And he knows our country needs – and deserves – a good government again.

A government that believes in the potential of the Australian people.

A Prime Minister who shares the values of the Australian people.

A Labor Government that's on their side.

Australians know the last year has been unlike any other in our lifetimes.

And when we look at the devastation and heartbreak still unfolding in parts of the world, it's only natural to feel that things could have been a lot worse here.

Yet when Mr Albanese looks at our country today, he also knows we can do so much better.

So much better than real wages declining over the next 4 years after flatlining over the last 8 years.

So much better than 3 more years of scandal and a government treating taxpayers funds as if they are Liberal Party funds.

So much better than 3 more years of announcements that are never delivered.

And so much better than merely coming back, rather than building back stronger.

This Budget offers a low growth, low productivity and low wage future – and a trillion dollars of debt – is that really the best we can aspire to?

Labor wants Australia to emerge from this crisis stronger, smarter and more self-reliant, with an economic recovery that works for all Australians.

Throughout this pandemic, Australians have given up so much.

Labor's plan is about rewarding and repaying the sacrifices that people have made.

Tonight, Mr Albanese further outlined Labor's alternative policy agenda.

An agenda with 3 guiding principles that will drive Labor in Government.

An economy that delivers for working families. Investing in Australia's future. No one held back and no one left behind.

These 3 principles will drive our plans and policies to secure a better future, improve living standards and promote fairness.

We have a once in a century opportunity to reinvent our economy; to lift wages and make sure they keep rising; to invest in advanced manufacturing and in skills and training with public TAFE at its heart; to provide affordable childcare; to fix aged care; to address the housing crisis; to champion equality for women; and to emerge as a renewable energy superpower.

That's the better future Mr Albanese wants to build for Australia as Prime Minister.

But Tuesday's Budget didn't speak for this country's future - it only told the sorry tale of 8 years of Liberal neglect.

8 YEARS OF LIBERAL NEGLECT

8 years of wasting opportunities – and running from responsibility.

8 years of flat wages and rising costs.

8 years of ignoring problems – and cutting funding from the solutions.

8 years of cushy jobs for Liberal mates – and insecure work for ordinary Australians.

8 years of holding people back – and leaving people behind.

Labor measures the strength of the economy by how it works for people.

So for us, there's a simple test by which we can judge the last 8 years.

And Australians will ask themselves:

Do they feel better off than they did 8 years ago?

Do they feel more secure at work?

When did they last get a wage rise?

Are they finding it easier to pay their bills?

Are they more certain of their future? And importantly, that of their children?

The past 8 years have been very good to this Prime Minister – and his mates.

But has it been good for all Australians?

Because after 8 years in power, this Prime Minister is getting ready to ask the Australian people for 3 more.

When Robert Menzies founded the Liberal Party, he spoke about 'the forgotten people'.

This Liberal Government just wants Australians to forget.

Forget its failures, forget its broken promises, forget all its jobs for its mates.

Make no mistake – the Budget handed down on Tuesday night is not a plan for the next generation - it is a patch-up job for the next election.

Remember that the centrepiece of last year's Budget was Jobmaker, that promised to create 450,000 new jobs.

It fell short – by 449,000.

That's right – not 450,000, just 1,000.

Missed by that much.

Like so much with this Government it was all smirk and mirrors.

This week the chasm between announcement and delivery didn't even make it to Budget night.

Having told Monday's papers that the Budget would provide $10 billion of additional infrastructure investment, the actual Budget papers show a $3.3 billion cut to infrastructure over the next 4 years.

A Government that is all announcement, no delivery.

See for this Prime Minister, the announcement is all about him. Always.

The press conference. The photo opp.

But when it comes to the part that affects Australians, the delivery – he's lost interest.

His only interest at that point, is blaming someone else.

When the black summer of bushfires raged, he said 'I don't hold a hose, mate'.

Now, with our tourism and education industries still locked-away from the world – and with more than 30,000 Australians stranded overseas, he says quarantine is a matter for the states and getting the vaccine isn't a race.

He puts out a press release threatening to put returning Australians in jail and then blames the media for reporting it.

Locked out or locked up – a message no Australian Government should send to our own citizens.

The Prime Minister's constant buck-passing and blame shifting has become a handbrake on our economic recovery.

The strength of our economic recovery is dependent on effective quarantine and vaccinations.

With more than a year to prepare the Government has bungled both.

We should have expanded existing quarantine facilities and built new ones across the country which are fit for purpose and located near medical and other needed support.

For example, Bladin Village outside of Darwin has the potential to house up to 1,000 people and is currently being used to quarantine US Defence personnel.

Australian citizens were promised they would be home by Christmas last year.

We were also told we were at the front of the queue for vaccines, when we in fact have one of the slowest rollouts in the world.

Now the Prime Minister and the Treasurer can't even agree on when Australians will be vaccinated.

Australia should be making mRNA vaccines here.

Our Labor Government will prioritise support for this production through our National Reconstruction Fund.

We believe Australia can be a world- leading pharmaceutical manufacturing hub.

And never again should the health of Australians be put at risk by this government's refusal to invest in manufacturing.

It's not just in his response to vaccinations and quarantine that this Prime Minister has failed the test of leadership.

A once-in-a-generation march by the women of Australia, in pursuit of respect and justice was ignored.

Courageous survivors, shunned and slandered.

A once-in-a-lifetime Statement from the Heart from the first Australians. A clarion call for truth, treaty and a voice.

Delayed – and then dismissed.

A generous statement to advance reconciliation that a Labor Government will embrace and advocate at a referendum.

The government forced into a compensation payout in excess of a billion dollars to the people it hounded through Robodebt.

Yet now preparing for the same program of cuts and harassment for people on the NDIS.

A new spirit of co-operation between unions and business, striving to improve conditions and productivity.

And this government uses it to launch an assault on workers' pay, sick leave and job security.

A new surge of momentum for global action on climate change.

And Australia with nothing to offer.

The Prime Minister literally stuck on mute in front of the world – and a government frozen in time while the world warms around it.

The Liberals offer-up nothing but a showbag budget.

Flashy enough to sell on Tuesday night, falling apart the next day when the reality of falling real wages, vaccination confusion, infrastructure cuts and productivity inertia became apparent.

Nothing built to last.

No real reform, just a series of announcements to overcome political problems of the Government's own making.

AN ECONOMY THAT WORKS FOR YOU

Labor believes that the economy should work for people, not the other way around.

People have endured 8 long years of stagnant wages, growing job insecurity and pressure on family costs like childcare, rent, petrol and groceries.

We know Australians who are counted as 'employed' can't get enough hours to pay the bills, or can't count on regular hours.

We know too many Australians are being exploited or underpaid or subjected to an unsafe environment, hostage to their insecure work.

And we know this government will seek to undermine trade unions at every opportunity.

At the first flicker of economic recovery, this government tried to cut wages and conditions.

Instead of standing up for people being paid as little as $2 an hour, they said enforcing the minimum wage, "was complicated".

Labor's plan for secure jobs includes: writing job security into the Fair Work Act; properly defining casual work; cracking down on the abuse of cowboy labour hire firms to ensure people who do the same job get the same pay; public reporting on the gender pay gap for large companies; and 10 days paid domestic and family violence leave.

And we will make wage theft a crime.

This should have been done. It could have been done.

But the Morrison Government voted to remove it from its own legislation.

An 8 year old government behaved like an 8 year old child and threw a tantrum.

And why was it cranky? Because Labor and the crossbench refused to support the parts of the legislation that would cut pay.

Our approach stands in stark contrast to those opposite who cut penalty rates and who boasted that low wages was "a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture".

Labor knows there is a better way. Boosting wages and lifting productivity is essential for economic growth.

If wages increase, workers will have more to spend in their local small businesses.

If elected Prime Minister, Mr Albanese will always stand up for secure jobs and fair wages.

Last year he outlined Labor's cheaper childcare plan.

Abolishing the cap and increasing the subsidy to lower childcare costs for virtually every family.

The Government dismissed Labor's policy, declared it had already fixed affordability and ridiculed the economic gain from investing in child care.

Now the Government has rushed out a half-baked policy announcement that it says will lower the structural disincentive to work that it used to tell us didn't exist.

What the Treasurer hasn't worked out is that if he performs half a backflip, he falls flat on his face.

That's why the Liberals' new policy will only help one in 4 of the families who will benefit from our plan and the Budget Papers show the workforce participation rate will fall.

Labor's policy will not only deliver support to 4 times the number of families, it will boost the economy substantially and move towards the universal affordable childcare for every family.

This is economic reform that's good for working families, good for our economy and good for children.

INVESTING IN AUSTRALIA'S FUTURE

A Labor Government will invest in Australian industry and our workforce, setting them up for success today, and into the future.

We'll create Jobs and Skills Australia to advise on the future work opportunities and to ensure Australians can benefit from them.

And we will establish a National Reconstruction Fund to transform existing industries and the industries of tomorrow.

We will partner with the private sector, including the superannuation industry to revive our ability to make products and be more self-reliant.

Australia has always produced scientific innovations, but we always haven't been good at commercialising them.

Think wifi, the black box, google maps, the cochlear implant.

Or solar technology.

Not long ago, solar power was seen as a useful novelty.

Good enough to run a pocket calculator but too expensive, too inefficient, too unreliable to power a home or a workplace.

Australians changed that.

Australian researchers and engineers.

Australian scientists and universities.

Australian breakthroughs in solar power reshaped the global energy grid.

Overwhelmingly this led to manufacturing and job creation overseas, not here.

And if we don't get smart, if we don't get serious, if we don't get moving – the same thing is going to happen again.

We mine and produce every element needed to build a lithium battery – the power storage technology of the future.

Labor does not want us to miss out on jobs and investment by sending those materials overseas for another country to manufacture and then importing them back once value has been added.

We want Australia making our own future.

To do that Australians can't be afraid of the future, we have to shape it.

The problem with this government isn't so much that it is stuck in the past, it's that it wants the rest of Australia to go back there and keep it company.

The Liberals abandoned a fibre based National Broadband Network claiming it would cost $29.5 billion.

Then it became $41 billion.

Then 49, then 51, then $57 billion.

Now of course they are having to retrofit back to fibre.

Their love for copper, has cost taxpayers a lot of brass.

Their insistence on looking backward on energy, communications, transport and so much more has driven our capability downward and our costs upward.

Ever since the Liberals drove Holden out of the country, they've run up the white flag on manufacturing and skills and apprentices.

Labor is not going to see us surrender any more jobs and industries - and the communities that depend on them.

An Albanese Labor Government will establish the "Start Up Year" program to help drive innovation and increase links between universities and entrepreneurs.

Start up loans will be offered to students and new graduates with ventures attached to a tertiary institution or designated private accelerator.

This will assist in the identification of opportunities for commercialisation of university research.

The government has proven incapable of developing an energy policy or dealing with climate change.

Positive action on climate change and moving to net zero emissions by 2050 will create jobs, lower energy prices and lower emissions.

And Labor has a plan to help families and communities play their part in achieving this critical target. A plan that will make electric cars more affordable and support the rollout of community batteries.

A Labor Government will create a New Energy apprenticeships program to train 10,000 young people for the energy jobs of the future.

This will support them with up to $10,000 over the course of their apprenticeship.

These 10,000 new apprenticeships will be available in: renewable energy generation; storage and distribution including in emerging technologies such as green hydrogen; energy efficiency upgrades; renewables manufacturing like batteries; and relevant agricultural activities.

The rest of the world has figured this out: cutting pollution means creating jobs.

NO ONE HELD BACK, NO ONE LEFT BEHIND

Every one of us hope to grow old.

More and more of us will live long enough to need extra care in our later years.

But right now that thought fills a lot of Australians with dread.

Our aged pensioners and retirees should have confidence that support will be their for them.

None of us can say we weren't told how to fix the system, with the Royal Commission delivering a comprehensive set of recommendations for change.

The Prime Minister must now explain why he has rejected so many of those important recommendations.

Like the recommendation to require a nurse on duty in nursing homes at all times.

Or support for increasing the appallingly low wages of hard-working aged care staff.

Or why he's opted for fewer hours of care than the Royal Commission recommended, and delivered them much later.

Or why the Government is congratulating itself for funding new homecare places, when it isn't even enough to clear the current waiting list.

A Labor Government will not allow older Australians to grow old alone, deprived of proper care and dignity.

We will not forget the dedicated, mostly female staff who care for our elderly, almost uniformly understaffed and underpaid.

The Morrison Government has not even managed to rollout the vaccine to these workers.

Older Australians were there for us, they have paid their taxes, held communities together, raised their families, served their country in war and in peace.

Older Australians deserve to be respected, to feel safe, to be comforted and treated with the utmost dignity.

This cannot be beyond us.

We can achieve this, we must achieve this. A Labor Government will deliver this.

And a Labor Government will deliver that care by ensuring that every dollar spent in aged care goes to employing a guaranteed minimum level of nurses, assistants and carers and to daily needs like decent food – rather than into the pockets of the more unscrupulous providers.

We also support the Fair Work Commission moving quickly to meaningfully lift the wages of aged care workers.

And we will ensure that dementia care management is core business given that up to 2 in every 3 aged care residents is affected.

The security of a roof over one's head should be available to all Australians.

Young people despair about whether they will ever afford a first home.

Families struggle to meet rent payments and older women are the fastest growing group subject to homelessness.

Mr Albanese is proud to say that Labor in government will create a $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, with the annual investment return to build social and affordable housing and create thousands of jobs.

Over the first 5 years this will build around 20,000 social housing properties, places like the home he grew up in.

His home gave so much more than somewhere to sleep. It gave him and his mum pride and dignity and security, and it gave him a future… a future that led him to be standing delivering the budget reply in the House of Representatives tonight.

Labor's housing plan is good for jobs too. This initiative will create over 21,500 jobs each year.

And 1 in 10 construction jobs created will be for apprentices.

Last year 10,000 mums and their children fleeing family violence were turned away from refuges because there wasn't a bed.

Tonight, women's crisis services across Australia will have to tell women fleeing violence they literally have nowhere to house them.

They will sleep in their car.

Or go back to dangerous situations.

Imagine the impact that has on children, on how they feel at school the next day.

Imagine the emotional toll on a mother, desperate to keep her children safe, but unable to offer them more.

This happens each and every day.

We can and we must do better.

That's why 4,000 of the 20,000 social housing properties that we create from this funding will be allocated to women and children experiencing domestic and family violence and older women on low incomes.

We will also provide $100 million for crisis and transitional housing for these women at risk.

We will build 10,000 affordable housing properties for frontline workers – the heroes of the pandemic, those nurses, police, emergency service workers and cleaners that are keeping us safe.

Some of the worst housing standards in the world are endured by our First Nations people. As part of our commitment to Closing the Gap the Fund will provide $200 million for the repair, maintenance and improvements of housing in remote Indigenous communities.

Two weeks after our country stood together on ANZAC Day to declare "Lest we Forget", 1 in 10 of the people who sleep rough on the streets in Sydney tonight, is a veteran.

Australia must do more to care for the brave men and women who have worn our uniform.

This fund will provide $30 million over the first five years to build more housing and fund specialist services for veterans who are either living or at risk of homelessness.

This is a Future Fund that will give more Australians a future.

More than a year ago, the Government received the Respect@Work Report.

Every woman should feel safe in every workplace, including this one.

The report recognised employers responsibility to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation from their businesses.

Labor in government will work with experts, employers and unions to make sure this responsibility is clear in our law, as was recommended by the report.

NATIONAL INTEGRITY COMMISSION

The Budget spending was very much focussed on political management of problems the government itself has created over the last 8 years.

Aged care cuts, childcare fee increases, ignoring of women's safety and economic security issues.

Over these 8 long years the Government has focussed on itself, too often treating taxpayers money as if it were the Liberal and National Parties money.

Sports rorts, community safety rorts, abuse of infrastructure and regional funding has grown with each year.

Even bushfire disaster funding was allocated with political bias.

And then $1 billion spent on government advertising promoting themselves.

In Tuesday's Budget it announced or topped up no less than 21 separate slush funds worth $4 billion of taxpayers money to splash around in the leadup to the next election.

In addition there is an extraordinary $9 billion where the only information is "decisions taken but not announced".

This is red hot abuse.

The Liberals can't change.

They won't change.

And they don't want to change.

It's this simple:

If you want to clean-up politics, you need a National Integrity Commission.

And if you want a fair dinkum National Integrity Commission – it will take a Federal Labor Government.

ON YOUR SIDE

None of us will forget this crisis we have lived through.

All of us are grateful that because of the sacrifices and unselfishness of so many, we have avoided the scale of death and trauma we see in other countries.

To the Australian people Mr Albanese says, "you have been magnificent, you have been brave, you have been resolute."

Now the Australian people deserve a government worthy of their efforts.

Because it would be a disaster if we emerge from this crisis having learned nothing – and changed not at all.

What a missed opportunity if our economy comes out the other side with nothing to show for this transformational moment but the biggest debt and deficit of all time.

If Australians see this pandemic as a chance to build back stronger, Labor is on their side.

If Australians believe economic policy should deliver higher wages, Labor is on their side.

If Australians want more security at work, Labor is on their side.

If Australians support equality for women, Labor is on their side.

If Australians support cheaper childcare, Labor is their side.

If Australians believe older people deserve dignity and care in their later years, Labor is on their side.

If Australians believe a roof over their heads is up to more than market forces, Labor is on their side.

If Australians get that action on climate change is an opportunity for our nation to emerge as a renewable energy superpower and create jobs, Labor is on their side.

If Australians share Labor's ambition for advanced manufacturing, high value industries, a world class services sector in a prosperous, outward looking, ambitious country, Labor is on their side.

And if Australians think sharing our continent with the oldest continuous civilisation on earth is a source of national pride and First Nations people should be recognized in our constitution, Labor is on their side.

The Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Albanese, has never forgotten where he came from.

He has never lost sight of the power of government to help people realise their potential.

He has never lost faith in our country's ability to compete and win in the world.

He truly believes this is a moment for Australia to make our own.

What we need now is a government with the plans to seize this chance.

A government driven by optimism about the future.

A government powered by determination to create opportunity.

A government that holds no-one back, that leaves no-one behind.

A Labor government – a government on the side of Australians.

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

I rise to give the budget in-reply speech on behalf of the Australian Greens, and I acknowledge firstly that I do so on Ngunawal and Ngambri land—stolen land that was never ceded.

Madam Deputy President, don't believe the government's budget spin. This is not a transformative budget. Forget the phony rejection of austerity, forget the about-face on debt and deficit, forget the superficial concern with women's economic security, because, once you scratch the surface of this budget, you will see that, like the last seven budgets this government has delivered, it is built on the con that is trickle-down economics. This budget proposes no change to the fundamentals of our economy or to the tax and transfer system. The neoliberal train is rolling ever onward, barrelling through everything in its path, ruining lives, destroying nature and cooking the planet. And upfront in the locomotives are the LNP, shovelling coal into the firebox to keep the neoliberal train rolling on.

This budget was handed down while the planet's climate is breaking down around us, threatening the very existence of life, and while the destruction of ecosystems is already causing a rate of species extinction that is epoch-defining. This budget has been handed down while economic inequality is spiralling out of control. The billionaires are accumulating feudal-era levels of wealth while real wages are going backwards and millions of Australians are forced to subsist below the poverty line. House prices are spiralling out of control, pricing an entire generation out of the great Australian dream of owning their own home—an entire generation forced to either make a Faustian pact with their bank and live a life of debt or be at the mercy of their landlord, who can increase their rent or terminate their tenancy on a whim. And, more than a century after being given the right to vote and decades after countless reforms meant to create equal opportunity for women, women are still being disadvantaged. There is an epidemic of family violence, and the toxic attitudes of far too many men towards women are still persistent and pervasive.

So what do we get in this budget? What does this budget do to respond to the big social, economic and environmental issues of our time? We get business as usual. Sure, some of the rhetoric has shifted, and, sure, there are some good things in this budget, as there are in any budget, but, underneath it, the same superstructure that created the climate crisis, that is enriching the already superwealthy, that is empowering the big corporations and that is perpetuating patriarchal attitudes and behaviours remains. In some cases, such as the spending of even more public money to help big corporations make even more profit from burning coal and gas, this budget is quite literally adding more fuel to the fire.

But, in many cases, it's what's not in this budget that matters, such as all the inequalities and rorts in the tax system that have gone untouched and that will continue to disadvantage young people and women and anyone else who is not in favour with the LNP. The budget provides no solution to the climate crisis, no response to escalating wealth inequality and no credible plan to increase wages or to lift people out of poverty. True to type, what this budget has done is deliver for the government's mates. This is a budget that should have been and was welcomed by the big corporates and the billionaires. This government was never going to do anything other than look after the big corporates and the billionaires, because this government exists to serve its political masters and donors. That is exactly what this budget does. That is exactly why the LNP are in this place. That is in their DNA.

Nowhere is this government's enslavement to its corporate donors and corporate masters more evident than in its archaic attachment to fossil fuels. Governments and markets around the world are changing tack and decarbonising at a rapid pace. The world is transitioning to a clean energy future as the urgency of the climate crisis becomes impossible to avoid. The US is on board. China is on board. The EU is on board. Left or right, democratic or totalitarian, government led or market led, it doesn't matter; the switch is on. The only question left is whether the switch will be fast enough to stop a catastrophic collapse in the ecosystems that sustain life on earth.

But is Australia on board with the switch? No. Is the government on board with the switch? Oh no, it's not. Their determination is not only to resist change but to actually fight against it. It is as astonishing as it is insane. In this budget, the Morrison government is giving yet another billion dollars in new public subsidies to the oil, gas and coal sectors, on top of the over $50 billion in public subsidies that were already headed their way. Their showcase derangement is the so-called gas-led recovery, a shameful exercise in corporate welfare for the rent seekers using yesterday's technology. It's all about giving public money to LNP donors to build polluting power plants that will push up power bills and will further fuel the climate crisis. Gas use by Australians is going down each and every year, and government money for new gas that is contained in this budget is nothing but a white elephant.

Australia should be moving to become a world leader in batteries, renewables and green hydrogen. We have a chance to supply the world not only with clean energy but with clean resources—steel, aluminium, other metals refined by using our abundant supply of renewable resources. But such is the political-industrial nexus between the Liberal Party and the fossil fuel industry, the government is willing to squander that opportunity in its determination to prop up a dying industry. That's why they've served up yet another budget that sells out our children's future for the sake of the big corporates and the superwealthy.

Speaking of political donations, during the pandemic when every economic indicator went backwards in this country and when hundreds of thousands of Australians were put out of work, Australia's billionaires increased their wealth by 34 per cent—that is, by $90 billion in one year, in the middle of a global pandemic, when millions of Australians were unemployed or underemployed. This is nothing short of obscene and it's an obscenity aided and abetted by this government. It's not a bug; it's a feature of this government's policy settings. Sixty-five of Australia's largest companies were given $1.2 billion in JobKeeper payments even though they recorded a profit during the pandemic. This included $21 million to Harvey Norman, who paid dividends which helped Gerry Harvey grow his personal wealth by $600 million last year.

Opposition Senator:

An opposition senator interjecting—

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

It is disgusting. How has this budget responded to the JobKeeper rort and the obscene accumulation of wealth? Well, I can't say it any better than Gerry Harvey, who said yesterday, 'They've thrown a heap of money at us.' Well, they sure have thrown a heap of money at Gerry Harvey and Australia's other billionaires. Straight out of Gerry Harvey's mouth: this is a budget for the billionaires.

Now, this can't be allowed to go unchecked. The Greens would introduce a billionaire's tax, a permanent six per cent tax on the net wealth of the richest 200 Australians that would increase revenue by $5 billion every year—money we could use to fund essential public services in this country and accelerate a transition to renewable energy and reforestation to draw down carbon and reduce our carbon emissions. We would also introduce a pandemic profiteering levy, a one-off 50 per cent tax on the increase on net wealth of billionaires last year; that would raise $29 billion. The Greens would also require those companies that received JobKeeper but that remained profitable to pay the JobKeeper payments back. This would return over $1 billion to the public purse that never should have left it in the first place.

An honourable senator interjecting—

Absolutely. Together, these measures would help stop the outrageous accumulation of wealth by the superwealthy and go some way towards restoring the notion of a fair go in Australia. The Greens would also introduce a mining superprofits tax. Not surprisingly, the billionaires who did the best of all in the pandemic are those in the resources sector. Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and Twiggy Forrest all more than doubled their wealth during the pandemic. These are the very same people who fought tooth and nail against a mining superprofits tax that would have ensured that some of the benefit of the commodity booms that they line their pockets with is returned to the people of Australia. Instead of their booming price just lining the pockets of Gina and Twiggy and Clive, it should enrich the country.

But there is no mining superprofits tax in this budget. There's no billionaires tax in this budget and neither is there any walking away from the stage 3 tax cuts that will further turn up the dial on economic inequality. These stage 3 tax cuts will deliver a $9,000 per annum tax cut to everyone who earns over $200,000 per annum at a cost—and have a go at this—of $150 billion over the next decade. These are more tax cuts for the billionaires. They've got to be repealed, they were grossly irresponsible at the time that they were introduced and they are even more grossly irresponsible now. What's more, the stage 3 tax cuts will immediately neutralise any of the progress that this budget makes towards putting women on a more equal economic footing.

The government has clearly finally and belatedly been chastened by the backlash to its appalling handling of allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment in Parliament House and its repeated cuts to women's support services in previous budgets. But this so-called women's budget has barely moved the needle on economic security or personal safety for women. It comes after the government has cut funding for women's support services for most of the last seven years. As my colleague Senator Waters said, there's a lot of sizzle but not much substance. The women's budget statement details $3.4 billion in new spending over the forward estimates, which is welcomed by the Greens, including $1.9 billion to help support women's economic security. But in the first year of the stage 3 tax cuts men will receive in their pockets $5.5 billion more than women. They are gendered tax cuts. What's more, some of the measures in this so-called women's budget are actually likely to decrease economic security for a lot of women.

The proposal to provide a government guarantee for single parents to buy a home with a two per cent deposit is directly encouraging single parents, many of whom are women, to take on a bigger loan than they would otherwise be able to do. It's nothing more than a government sanctioned debt trap. In the most overpriced housing market in the world, just how is encouraging people to borrow more money than they can afford and more money than everyone else going to help secure their future? Well, it's not. But that's how this budget approaches one of the fundamental causes of growing inequality. It continues to avoid the issue that is central to the housing affordability crisis, the homelessness crisis and the rent stress that many people are experiencing in this country. Australia's real estate is amongst the most expensive in the world, and what is the government's solution? To encourage people to take on even more debt, to raid their super, so they can spend even more money on housing and push housing prices up to even more ridiculous highs.

Who benefits from this? Existing investors, who only pay half the tax they should on the sale of their investment property, at a cost of $8.5 billion a year to the budget bottom line. Who else benefits from it? Yes, of course, the banks that are more than happy to write a loan of any size, regardless of whether people can afford it or not, and whose profits are heading right back up to where they were before the royal commission. They're rubbing their hands together at the thought of responsible lending laws being repealed. This madness has to stop. The Greens would get rid of the rorts in the tax system that has rigged the housing market in favour of investors and done over Australian people who simply want a home. We would invest massively in social and affordable housing, and build a million new affordable homes. We could end homelessness and provide people with an alternative to debt enslavement or a life in private rentals.

The government's obsession with pumping the housing market ever higher is just one of the ways in which this budget once again does over young people. Having reaped the benefits of cheap housing, free university education, job security and a liveable climate, all members of this government can say to young people is: 'F you; we've got ours.' It's nothing less than a complete betrayal of an entire generation and of future generations. It will lock in inequality and actively make the climate breakdown quicker, because people in this parliament, with the possible exception of my colleague Senator Steele-John, won't be the ones who will bear the main brunt of the climate catastrophe. Those in the major parties of course, as they always do, will get their sinecures—their jobs on the boards of fossil fuel companies—and settle down to an extremely well superannuated retirement. And, in the meantime, the country and the society that young people will inherent is being run down by the day. To young people today, I can only and most sincerely apologise on behalf of my generation and those who came immediately before us.

Young people, of course, will also bear the brunt of yet another round of cuts to higher education. The devastation caused by the pandemic and the loss of international students of itself is not enough for this government. The budget will reduce funding for universities by 10 per cent and reduce funding for TAFE by 24 per cent. My colleague Senator Faruqi said it well: 'How can we expect to rebuild when the government is hell-bent on decimating teaching and research?' And what's the government doing with the money it's cutting from universities and TAFE? It is putting more money into vocational education, most of which, of course, will go into the pockets of the for-profit providers—more cuts to public education, more money for privatisation, more outsourcing, more profits for the big corporates.

Stoking house prices and making cuts to tertiary education are just some of the ways this budget makes sure nothing is done to address entrenched poverty. This government's favourite way, of course, of entrenching poverty is to punish, threaten, bully and blame people who haven't got a job. Of course, why can't a lot of people get a job in this country? Because there aren't enough jobs to go around. Blaming an individual for the situation they're in is central to the great neoliberal con. It's also the go-to 'look over there' tactic to distract from the fact that the billionaires are making out like bandits. So, there again, in this budget is another $213 million to strengthen mutual obligations—more money spent forcing unemployed people to look for jobs that aren't there while income support payments stay bogged below the poverty line.

This is not how things should be in a wealthy country like Australia, because we have a choice. Instead of giving the handouts to the big corporates and the billionaires, the Greens would increase JobSeeker to $80 a day and lift people who haven't got a job out of poverty. Together with investment in public services and public infrastructure, the Greens will provide a national jobs and income guarantee. We can afford to do this. We are a wealthy country. If we weren't continually giving the handouts to the big polluting corporations, to the already obscenely wealthy, we could achieve that goal. Ours is a commitment to real full employment and a universal liveable income to help increase wages and boost the economic recovery. It's the right and fair and humane thing to do.

To help meet this commitment to full employment, the Greens would establish a $6 billion nature fund. This colonial state has done a disgraceful job of looking after this beautiful country. Our rivers are drying, our forests are being strip-mined and burned, and thousands of species are facing extinction. First Nations people are losing totems, and cultural heritage is being wantonly destroyed for profit and for convenience. But we can turn around and create thousands of jobs in the restoration of nature, in reforestation and in the protection of our lands and our oceans. All it would take is a budget for nature. But that's not this budget. In this budget, nature loses again. Not content with having cut funding for environmental restoration since coming to power, this government has brought down a budget that includes more money to tear up environmental protections and destroy habitats. The government's own review into the EPBC Act found that a continuation of the existing regime would be an acceptance of habitat destruction and species extinction. If you take this budget as a measure of the government's mind, that's quite alright by them.

Much has been made of how well Australia has responded to the pandemic and how much that has helped economic conditions to recover. But let's remember this: the government outsourced quarantine to the states, they left aged care to rot, and now they've completely stuffed up the vaccine rollout. At every step, this government has hesitated and deflected. Scott Morrison is, in one regard, a lucky Prime Minister—that is, lucky to be the leader of an island nation. Sitting proudly in his office is a ghoulish trophy of a boat that celebrates his cruelty to people who sought asylum in Australia. Perhaps he might now commission a trophy of a plane to celebrate how he's prevented Australian citizens, permanent residents and temporary visa holders from coming home during this pandemic. His cruelty to refugees, people seeking asylum and migrants, which was his defining trait before becoming Prime Minister, has not stopped. In this budget, he is stripping back $671 million from migrants who need social support—an utterly unconscionable thing to do during a global pandemic.

As always, there's plenty of money to lock people up in offshore and onshore immigration detention. The government are going to spend nearly half a billion dollars of new money to warehouse yet more human beings indefinitely in immigration detention because the pandemic has resulted in a situation where they simply can't deport as many migrants as they would like to. And they're going to spend—get this figure!—$9,300 per person, per day on offshore detention. That is nearly $10,000 per person, per day on offshore detention to continue to brutalise people who have already suffered so greatly at this government's hands and at the hands of previous governments of both political stripes. It is nothing less than a stain on our national conscience, a foul and bloody chapter in our country's story.

This is a budget built on marginalising people, destroying nature, turbocharging climate change and pandering to the billionaires and the big corporations. Just one example of that is its treatment of disabled people. This budget has cut staff to the NDIS while spending $127 million to pay for so-called independent assessments. What that will mean is strangers going into the homes of disabled people, forcing them to perform and prove that they actually have a disability. It is disgraceful and humiliating, and Senator Steele-John and the other Greens will fight that all the way.

I want to conclude where I began: by acknowledging that we are on First Nations land. This land is stolen land, and what that means is that the wealth that this nation has accumulated and this budget allocates out is stolen wealth, wealth taken from this stolen land. Colonial Australia was founded on dispossessing First Nations peoples of their land. Whatever the dollar value of our wealth, we will remain poor as a nation until we are honest about that fact. We need truth-telling about the historical and ongoing injustices faced by First Nations people, truth-telling about the rapes, the kidnappings and the attempted genocide. We need justice for First Nations people. We need truth and we need a treaty between the sovereign First Peoples of this land and the colonising state. Until we have those things, every budget we see in this place will be parcelling out stolen wealth. In this budget we get a budget that damages country and further enriches the superwealthy with the profits of this stolen land.

Budgets are about choices, and this budget chooses the billionaires over the millions of Australians who are struggling to get by. The government has made its choices in this budget and the Greens have made our choice, and we choose to take on and stand up to the billionaires. We choose to take on and stand up to the big corporates and their puppets in this place and in this parliament. We have a clear plan that would create a fairer and more equal society. We have a plan for justice for First Nations people, a plan for a government led program of action to set us up for the future and address the great challenges of our time, a plan to establish a national jobs and income guarantee and a 700 per cent renewable energy society by exporting clean energy to the world, a plan to build a million affordable, accessible and high-quality homes, a plan to revitalise Australia's manufacturing sector, including through locally made vaccines, a plan for universal free child care and free tertiary education, a plan to care for nature and restore degraded places. We have a plan for the billionaires and the big corporations to pay their fair share of tax so we can afford to deliver the public services and the supports that Australians want and need from their governments. Our commitment to the Australian people is to fight for them every day, instead of fighting for the vested interests that hold this country back, like the government is doing.

Debate adjourned.