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

If 2025 has proven anything, it is this: our political system is designed to fail ordinary people. Instead of fixing that broken system, the Albanese Labor government has spent the past year defending it, propping it up and polishing it. They have all this power in majority government and nothing good to show for it. This Labor government was first elected in 2022, following the climate election, with a promise to take real action on the climate crisis. What we have seen is anything but.

The climate crisis is not an accident. It is a direct result of big business seeking profit at any cost and of governments too cowardly, too compromised and too entangled with big money to stop them. This year, Labor approved Woodside's North West Shelf expansion, a disaster for the climate and for the priceless Murujuga rock art. Why did Labor approve it? It's because Woodside wanted them to, because the fossil fuel industry continues to run the show, because rampant capitalism rewards destruction and because Labor refuse to bite the hand of the carbon cartel that feeds them.

Then came the climate risk assessment, a document Labor tried to hide for months because it outlines the devastating consequences we are facing by utterly failing to tackle the climate crisis. Yet the government refuses to even acknowledge what is causing this crisis—the coal and gas projects that they continue to approve left, right and centre. Then there are the environmental reforms that Labor has proposed, which, in their current form, are a gift to environmental vandals. In its current form, it is a framework built around faster and cheaper approvals for fossil fuel corporations to bulldoze First Nations country and destroy the planet. This is corporate lobbying turned into legislation, and the planet and the climate are paying the price.

Nowhere is the sickness of our system clearer than in the Labor government's response to Israel's genocide in Palestine. Thousands and thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Gaza has been destroyed. Children have been starved, bombed and buried under the rubble, and the Albanese government has not just looked away but actively participated. The government endorsed Trump's sham peace plan, which entrenches apartheid and denies the Palestinian people self-determination and justice. Australia continues to supply parts of weapons that will murder children. Why? It's because the United States demands loyalty, because the weapons industry demands customers and because supporting genocide is, apparently, less politically risky than standing up to colonial violence. This is what happens when foreign policy is dictated by weapons manufacturers, imperialists and warmongers, not by morality.

We see the same pattern in Sudan and in the Congo, where mass slaughter, famine and displacement continue with little more than a murmur from the international community. The crisis in Sudan is not an unstoppable tragedy. It is a consequence of deliberate choices made by governments who arm dictators, who sign trade deals with tyrants and who put profit before human life. This humanitarian catastrophe demands that Australia speak up and act, and it demands that Australia commit to significantly more aid and humanitarian access. The global war machine has an endless, insatiable appetite for death, genocide and destruction, and the international system meant to restrain it has become too weak and too compromised to even try.

This year, racism has dug its claws even deeper into the world we live in. State Labor governments ramped up racist policing and passed antiprotest laws that criminalise democratic dissent. Federally, they've leaned into dog whistling, blaming migrants and international students for their own failures to address the housing crisis. It has kept communities of colour living in fear. This is not passive; this is deliberate. A system built on inequity and white supremacy relies on racism to survive. It ensures demonisation of the marginalised by hate and fear while people can't make ends meet and the billionaires feast.

This year, the big banks pocketed almost $30 billion in profit. Coles and Woolworths jacked up prices while working families skipped meals. Energy giants raked in tens of billions selling our resources back to us at inflated prices. Mining corporations made super profits off climate destruction and paid pennies in tax. If anyone still doubts that the system is not working, look no further than the obscene explosion of wealth among Australia's richest ultrawealthy people. While ordinary families line up at food banks, while renters are pushed into homelessness and while workers juggle two or three jobs to stay afloat, the wealth of the ultrarich in this country is growing at sickening, obscene rates.

Gina Rinehart's personal fortune grew by billions in a single year. The wealth of the Murdoch dynasty, of Andrew Forrest and of the tech and property barons skyrocketed, even as the living standards of everyday Australians fell. The combined wealth of Australia's richest 200 people now sits at $668 billion. It grows faster than wages and faster than GDP. This is not a quirk of the market. This is the inevitable outcome of a system that rewards hoarding, rewards endless greed and rewards exploitation. It is a system where the rich get richer because ordinary people are squeezed harder every year.

Let me be crystal clear: these billionaires are not some geniuses lifting this country up. They extract, and they exploit. Their wealth increases when someone else's hardship increases. Their gain is our loss, yet they get away scot-free. There is no super profits tax or wealth tax. There are no meaningful constraints on supermarket price gouging. The governments cut deals, offer subsidies and roll out the red carpet, because, in this system, political success is tied to appeasing the very people responsible for the suffering of millions.

Responding to this is not a matter of tweaking around the edges. The entire system is failing because it was built to fail—to fail us. We do not have the luxury of pretending that this can be fixed with mild reforms or incrementalism. We must build something different. A different future is not idealistic; it is necessary. It means public ownership of essential services operated for people, not profit. It means housing as a human right. It means a public higher education system that is debt free and independent from corporate control. It has workers at the centre with strong unions, secure jobs and fair wages. It has antiracist, anticolonial governance. It confronts white supremacy instead of feeding it. It is just and caring. This is not impossible to achieve, but we do need a bit of courage to do it.

We stand on the shoulders of movements that reshaped the world. The union movement won the eight-hour day, the health and safety of workers and even the weekend. The civil rights movement dismantled segregation. The women's liberation movement won reproductive rights and economic freedoms. The anti-apartheid movement toppled a system once considered unbreakable. But these victories were not delivered by compliant politicians. They were delivered by ordinary people who refused to accept the status quo of their time and who loudly and proudly protested for a better future.

In Australia as well, governments once dared to build big. We created Medicare, public housing, income support and free education. We have done this before. We can do this again, but only if we confront the system standing in our way, a system that feeds off exploitation and suffering. The billionaires will not save us. The banks will not save us. The corporations will not save us. The politicians who pander to them will not save us either. We will have to save ourselves through people power movements, through solidarity and through collective power. We are running out of time, but we're not running out of hope. Hope turned into action has always been the most powerful force in history. (Time expired)

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Having been on the marketing side of politics in my younger days, I can say that there is nothing more we love on the marketing side than a three-word slogan. Also something we senators don't shy away from is four-word slogans. I'd like to, through you, Deputy President, suggest a truth-in-advertising slogan for those on the other side. We've seen their best. They come up with great ideas. They identify problems and come up with ideas on how to fix them, but let's have a look at what they actually do when they get to them.

They came out with a $275 price cut for electricity for everyone. That didn't happen. They said, 'We'll build 11,000 affordable homes per year to help people with the housing crisis.' That hasn't happened. 'We'll fix climate change by taxing people.' That won't happen. 'We'll give prosperity back to people by managing the economy.' With the way they do it, that can't happen. So the four-word slogan that the Labor Party of Australia should be using out there is 'didn't, haven't, can't, won't', because this is where they come from—didn't, haven't, can't, won't. All their ideas, their solutions to the problems they identify, don't work. Historically, they haven't gone through—

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you don't know, vote no!

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We hear this. We hear the interjection. I'll take that interjection. That's why we vote no—because, when we hear dumb ideas for solutions to problems that they identify, we have to say no. We hear about the HAFF and the delay that this side and the Greens put on the HAFF. They delayed all this happening. We've had more than a year since that happened and billions of dollars, and it's built, what, 15 homes in New South Wales? Billions of dollars for 15 homes, not the 11,000—that's the 'can't'. That's the 'haven't'. Let's get down to this. Great ideas, rubbish execution—can't, haven't, won't, can't. This is what we get to with this side of government. That's why we come here.

But let's go further than that. Let's look further. When we get down to the axe, here we go—he cuts, you pay, because we can't cut public servants, unless we're the government, in which case we can cut $5.6 billion worth of public servants out of the economy by reprioritising. Reprioritising people out of jobs is not cutting, apparently. That is something else. This is what we got there. We hear the line 'fee-free apprentices'. Why didn't we support that? There are 100,000 less apprentices in the market now than when you took government. So fee-free TAFE—great, less apprentices in the market.

We hear, 'We're going out there on social safety—the under-16 social safety net.' It's a great idea, but we look at the policy that is to come in just next week. Will it work? No. We're not taking account of VPNs. We're not taking account of search engines that allow blurred images to come up. We're not doing enough of these things—all good things that we have to address but we don't.

Let's get to emissions reduction. What has this government done in the 3½ years since they've been there? Spent tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, not government money; put up energy bills, on average, about a thousand bucks a year; and had no emissions reduction. Not one iota of emissions reduction has been measured. So they've spent billions, cost you thousands and reduced no emissions. That takes a certain level of incompetence to be able to achieve. I'm not the greatest person ever; far from it. But even I couldn't achieve that level of incompetence, I don't think. That is really striving. That's hitting for the bridges. That's the moonshot of incompetence that these people have achieved—billions of dollars, thousands of dollars, no change. I might try harder when we go down there.

And we hear this 'cheapest form of energy'. It's a great line, but I do note that the language changed. 'Cheapest form of new energy' is now the phrase we use. We've had to modify that. There's a little asterisk in the corner now. Why? Because we see out there our metal producers, such as Tomago Aluminium, where I am, who get to access this 'cheapest form of'—asterisk—'new energy' out there, need billions of dollars of bailouts. They need billions of dollars to use the cheapest energy there is! How does that work? How do we need to bail out companies and taxpayers with energy rebates for using the cheapest energy there is? Once again, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I don't understand why we need to bail people out and give people rebates for using the cheapest energy that exists. It just doesn't make sense.

What we're seeing is great identification of issues: 'Let's pass a bill; let's have a crack at this side for not voting for it.' But why aren't we voting for it? Because they're rubbish solutions. It's as if I've got a flat tyre on my car and I take it and get the engine tuned up. That's what these people are doing here. It doesn't fix the problem. It's adjacent to the problem, but it doesn't fix the problem. We see this right across every portfolio, on every solution. We sit there and we say, 'Why don't you bring things to it?' and all we get accused of is voting against this legislation. You can't have a crack at us for identifying the incompetence. It's what we're here to do. What do you think it takes, ladies and gentlemen in the gallery? How much incompetence do you think it takes for the Greens and the Nationals to vote together to identify this? It doesn't happen very often that we see eye to eye, but, when we block, it's because we jointly see that.

The previous speaker raised immigration and the dog whistling that occurs in response to that. Immigration happens when you bring in all these people and you don't build the services, the hospitals, the houses or the roads. It causes problems for Australians who are already here when this government doesn't do the work to make sure that everyday Australians aren't put under housing pressure and cost pressure and can get into hospitals. But then this is put on the immigrant communities that come here for the right reasons—to help make a better Australia. Because the government can't do the basics, those communities suffer the consequences of this debate. That is not good enough.

Australia deserves a competent, better government, not just one that gets the slogans right. This is why we see Prime Minister Albanese have so many people in his comms team and so few people in his policy team. It is coming through all of the time. That is why there is the new job for Minister Bowen going around the world, telling everyone else how to do it, because we haven't just wrecked it. We can wreck the whole world this way. We don't have to just wreck Australia's energy policy; we can bring down the whole world if we try hard enough and get in behind this government. So I urge all of us to let Minister Bowen get out there and really hurt the rest of the world so we're on an equal basis again. Let's get down there, where Australia's competitiveness has gone. Living standards are now down to 2011 levels. People in here, people listening at home on what used to be called the wireless—I haven't heard it called the wireless for a very long time, but let's call it the wireless for today—and people driving in their cars are having the living standards of 2011 because their costs have gone up and their wages have gone down, relatively, since this.

That is why, when we were looking at our energy policy—when we were looking at different things and at every policy—we went through our three word slogan. Here it comes: cheaper, better, fairer. Everything must be those things if we are going to look for it.

It was coming. On the other side, they knew it was coming. They wanted it. They love it too. In everything they want to do, they should be living by those words: cheaper, better and fairer. If we are not here trying to make Australian policies those things, if we are looking at energy—and let's go back to this thing. Electricity is up 39 per cent and gas is up 43 per cent since they've been here. They are the real numbers when you go forward. When you look at the $1,000 extra you are paying on your bill every year, it is because we are out there with the cheapest form of new—remember that aspect—energy, not the cheapest form of existing energy. This is the way they're going forward on this. They're even being careful with that.

We talk about the emissions cuts that Australia has done. Let's be real here. Australia has reduced emissions compared to 2005 levels, under the Paris Agreement, by 28 per cent. That is double the average for OECD nations.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Point of order?

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If Senator Cadell's policies are so good, why is Mr Joyce leaving the Nationals and—

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is not a point of order, Senator Farrell. Resume your seat, Senator Farrell.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection, because—let's face it—Mr Joyce has only been in the party room for one of two reasons: (1) because he's leader or (2) because he wants to be leader. If he's going to another party room, I think those two things will still apply.

When we get back to here, let's go through what we're doing going forward. Australia's emissions reductions are 28 per cent, more than double the OECD average to this point, and we have been doing this through the use of land. I'm a National Party senator. We have been doing it through land-use change—the LULUCF method, which they called 'the Australia clause' in the Paris Agreement. Let's be honest about that. The change in land use from productive forestry or productive agriculture to being locked up, to produce Australian carbon credit units, ACCUs—and we'll talk about the methodology of that at another time—has produced the vast majority of this.

There has been no serious work on emissions reduction in the energy area, which forms one-third of Australia's emissions. Electricity is only a third of that again.

But, as I said originally, in 3½ years, tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money were spent, with zero real change in emissions. If you look at the scoreboard, that will tell you. Don't believe the hype. That was a great rap song from the eighties! We were at an eighties party last night. If I go back to the time when I think Senator Pocock might—I don't know if he played under coach Rob Dyer or not; I'm looking— (Time expired)