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

What defines this Labor government more than anything else is its total and abject lack of ambition. Every policy is triangulated. Every so-called reform is watered down to the bare minimum. Every decision is designed to achieve one goal and one goal only: to keep Labor in power for as long as possible. There's no vision for the country. There's no appetite for real reform. There's no willingness to take on the top end of town, the vested interests, the big corporations that are making life so difficult for so many millions of everyday Australians.

Labor is such a small target that it is disappearing into nothingness, and Australians are responding, as we've seen in the Farrer by-election, by leaving the major parties in droves, because our political system is not responding to the great challenges of our time. Housing is unaffordable, whether you're a mortgagee or a renter. Grocery prices are soaring. Wages are stagnant in real terms. People are working harder and harder and falling further and further behind. Our tax system is rigged in favour of the one per cent and against working people.

But things are not tough for everyone in this country. The top one per cent are doing just fine. Big corporations are doing just fine. And Labor won't take them on, because those people, those corporations, are Labor's constituency. The point of politics, folks, is supposed to be improving people's lives, responding to the great challenges of our times, not acting in your own political self-interest. That is the lesson Labor needs to learn.