STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Ms WATSON-BROWN (Ryan) (13:39): Today I have a warning—$1 trillion. That was the net worth of billionaires at Donald Trump's inauguration. Billionaires have been put in charge of key government departments.

There's a name for this. It's called oligarchy—rule by the rich—and now they're trying to bring it here. Homegrown billionaires like Gina Rinehart have all swung in behind Trump.

Rinehart has called on Australian politicians to be more like Donald Trump and has hosted fundraisers for the coalition. The entry price was $14,000. The Leader of the Opposition has happily reciprocated, heading off on an increasingly Trumpian cosplay.

What's the agenda? It's to provide tax breaks for billionaires and corporations, fast-track approvals of new coal and gas projects, derail our progress on renewables, make it more expensive to see a GP, and launch poisonous, divisive culture wars to distract us while the incredibly wealthy get even wealthier. We could get dental into Medicare, we could make uni free again, we could build hundreds of thousands of genuinely affordable homes and we could fund a huge expansion in renewables and storage, but we're letting billionaires and big corporations make bigger and bigger profits and pay less and less tax, and the Leader of the Opposition wants to make it worse.

We can't let billionaires buy our democracy.