Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right across the country kids have been going back to school and starting their new year. For families, this should be a time of excitement—first-day photos, new routines, fresh starts. But instead for too many parents and carers it's a time of huge stress and anxiety about how they are going to pay for it all. If families feel like they can't get ahead, they're not alone. The Smith Family has found that nine in 10 families they support are worried about affording basic back-to-school essentials. This is now the third year in a row that more than 80 per cent of families say they cannot afford the things their children need for school.

In a wealthy country like ours, that should shame us. Why are one in six children growing up in poverty? Parents are being pushed to put school books, lunches and extracurricular activities on credit cards, going into debt just so their kids don't miss out while big corporations continue to make record profits. At the same time, Labor is still allowing one in three big corporations to pay no tax at all. Unless they choose to do things differently, this crisis will only deepen. Within the next year, more than one million children are projected to be living in poverty. Labor could make different choices. They could tax big corporations and billionaires fairly, not working people, and invest properly in families and children. The Greens will always put the needs of kids and their families over big business, billionaires and big corporations. The question is: does Labor have the courage to do the same?