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

It's 2025, and the system is broken in Australia. People know it; people aren't fools. They know a bandaid measure when they see it. They can tell when politicians are kicking the can down the road and saying: 'It's in the too-hard basket. Maybe the problems will sort themselves out.' They can see when politicians are saying all the right things but, at the end of the day, care more about corporate profits than people, and they are jack of it.

The cost of living is out of control. The gap between income and house prices has never been wider. Wages are crawling while hoarding property is rewarded with massive tax handouts. And the biggest problem of all? Big corporations are making record profits, writing the rules to suit their bottom lines and, all the while, skimping on their tax bills.

People voted for us to take action on the problems that they're facing. They voted for a progressive parliament. We could be leading the world in climate action. We could end the housing crisis that is seeing housing prices soar while millions are locked out. We could protect country with strong environmental laws and sign a long-overdue treaty with First Nations people. We were all put here in this parliament to fix the problems that our country is facing, and the Greens are ready to support the kind of courage that it takes to actually end the housing crisis and put us on track for a safe climate future. The Greens are ready to go. We've got the numbers; we're in the balance of power. Now it's a question of Labor's ambition.

Right now the government gives better tax incentives to billionaires like Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart than it does to people who actually work for a living. Whether you're a nurse or a sparky, you contribute more to this country in your taxes than a billionaire who's gotten rich off selling somebody else's work. The Greens want public money to help you, not them. There is absolutely no way to justify a nurse paying more tax than oil and gas companies like Santos. If we actually taxed those big corporations and billionaires so that they paid their fair share, we could raise the revenue to bring down the cost of living, to reduce inequality and to make life better for millions of people. We could implement a rent freeze. We could do a big build of public and affordable homes. Bringing dental into Medicare, wiping student debt and making TAFE and uni free again, like it used to be—that is all possible. It's the government that is choosing not to do it. While the cost of living spirals, corporate profits skyrocket, and the major parties refuse to act.

Those corporate profits are then conveniently fed back into the election war chests of both major parties. Last financial year, Labor received about $800,000 from resources companies, including in cash, in subscriptions and in tickets to party events. We don't know what they received in the 2024-25 financial year, including the contributions just before the recent election, and we won't know that until next February. When coal and gas corporations pour big money into politics, they are effectively given the pen to write our climate and environmental laws. That's not democracy; that's capture. Real climate action means putting people and the planet ahead of private profits.

We know that the environmental and climate crisis is the most critical issue of our generation. We can change course, but we have to change the system. Climate change is making our country less safe, destroying the environment and supercharging natural disasters that are already costing communities dearly. Australia has done too little for far too long. We have squandered that critical decade for climate action, and now science based targets that keep warming below two degrees will require faster and more focused effort.

It will require reaching net zero in the next 10 years, not by 2050 or, as the coalition is proposing, not reaching it at all. Every little bit that we do now will make the climate crisis less bad; it all matters. Our native forests could recover. We could stop species extinctions. We could lessen the severity of those turbocharged natural disasters, but it will take strong political leadership, and, so far, Labor has only offered disappointment in the face of impending climate disaster. The climate wars were supposed to be over, but here we are in Labor's second term, and they just can't stop approving coal or gas projects.

I was fortunate to visit Heron Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef recently, where last year a major coral bleaching event killed 40 per cent of the coral cover around that island. Whilst it was hopeful to see some areas of recovery and the resilience of some of those coral species, we know that the more stress a coral reef is placed under, the harder it is for those species to recover. We need to stop the oceans and our planet warming, and that means no new coal and gas in a climate crisis. The Greens have been put into the balance of power to get stuff done. Labor knows that Australians want climate action. The climate and environment cannot wait.

Women are sick of waiting too—waiting for equality, waiting for safety, waiting for financial security. Our current tax system entrenches financial disadvantage that follows women for a lifetime. We should be removing the financial barriers that disincentivise new mums from going back to work when they're ready to do so. The effective marginal tax rate, as it's known, means less take-home pay for women through increased tax and student debt repayments combined with a loss of family tax benefits, childcare support and other measures. Mums and parents who do want to go back to work should be encouraged to do that, not be paying so much tax on days 3, 4 or 5 that they're essentially working for free.

Women deserve economic security, and they deserve to safe from violence. So far in 2025, at least 32 women have been murdered in acts of gendered violence. Just a few days ago in my home state of Queensland, Carra Luke was killed in her home on Sunday 24 August. Her ex-husband, against whom she had taken out a domestic violence order, has been charged with her murder. We cannot allow this to keep happening. Stopping violence against women will require deep prevention work. It will take systemic action to tackle the root causes and transform those harmful social norms.

But it will also require adequate funding of the organisations that do that hard work on the frontlines responding to this epidemic. The Albanese government's funding continues to fall short of the $1 billion per year that the women's safety sector needs to ensure that everyone who reaches out for help can get it, and those organisations have been telling you that for nigh on 10 years. I'm proud that the Greens took a comprehensive funded policy package to the election to address the national crisis of family, domestic and sexual violence, but we need Labor to come to the table with the funding required to tackle this epidemic of violence against women.

When inequality is ignored and when workers are exploited, migrants are scapegoated and the environment is treated as disposable, fascism thrives. Fascism doesn't announce itself in a single moment. It builds over time, and it's up to us, in each moment, to say to every micro- and macroaggression: 'Enough. We will not allow what is happening in the US to happen here in Australia.' It is up to us to ensure that marginalised communities do not pay the price—that they're not persecuted or demonised or blamed for the problems of the day. The housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis are not caused by them; they're caused by a system designed to prioritise corporate profits over everyday people.

I take heart in the number of people prepared to raise their voices in the face of injustice, walking alongside tens of thousands of people in Meanjin Brisbane just this Sunday to call for an end to the genocide in Gaza. It was such a powerful affirmation of the importance of community and collective organising and the strength of the hearts of Australians. I haven't seen such an enormous turnout since the Black Lives Matter rally in 2020 and, before that, the Iraq War protests in 2003, both of which I was proud to march in as well.

We are not powerless. This is medicine for the moment. This medicine really is community.

Together we can build a future that works for all of us, where we leave no-one behind and ensure a home for all, free education, cheaper groceries and dental and mental health care into Medicare, and ensure we not only protect but revere our natural places—our oceans, forests, rivers and everything in between. That's what gives me heart, and I hope it does for you too. A new future is possible, and we'll build it together.