Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2025-2026, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026
Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (19:23): I rise to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2025-2026 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026, which provide remaining appropriations for government expenditure and funding for the government's 2025-26 budget measures. Inequality in Australia is spiralling.
More and more people are struggling to make ends meet. They haven't got enough money to get their teeth fixed. They are really struggling to put a decent feed on the table for themselves or their families.
People are having to make difficult or sometimes nearly impossible choices about whether to pay the rent or the school levies or to service their mortgages. At the same time as millions of Australians are living under the stress of not being able to afford the basic necessities of life, big corporations are raking in record profits, CEOs are pocketing eye-watering bonuses and billionaires and the one per cent of the wealthiest in this country are watching their bank balances go through the roof while they don't even lift a finger.
We live in one of the richest countries on earth, yet our wealth and the resultant power and influence are concentrated in fewer hands than before. The people who are working the hardest are in many cases the people who are getting left behind the quickest. Those who have the most keep on making more.
It is deeply, bitterly unfair. It is an absolute rip-off for millions of Australians. If you are a nurse, a cleaner, a plumber, a teacher, a carer or a hairdresser, you go to work, work hard and pay a lump of what you earn in tax.
But one per cent in this country, the small number of superwealthy people in Australia, don't have to work. Their wealth generates yet more wealth—in many cases without them even lifting a finger. Do you know what?
Their wealth and the increase in their wealth do not get taxed in Australia. It is a giant rip-off, and it is deeply and fundamentally unfair. We need to tax extreme wealth in this country, and we can use the revenue to fund things like putting dental into Medicare so that people don't have to pay to get their teeth fixed.
We can use it to fund things like completely wiping student debt so that we can give young people what just about everyone in this place had access to, and that is a free university education. One of the great triumphs of the proponents of this deeply and bitterly unfair society that so many of us are living in now is to convince so many people that a better life is not possible and that a fairer society and a fairer economy are not possible.
But those things are possible. The only reason we don't have a fairer society and a fairer economy is the political choices that are being made by the people in this building and in this chamber. I say to people who are struggling that, if you can't afford to get your teeth fixed, if you can't afford to put a decent feed on the table for you and your family, if you can't afford to pay the rent, if you can't afford to service your mortgage or if you can't afford the school levies, it is because the Labor and Liberal parties won't make the one per cent extreme wealthy people in our country pay their fair share of tax.
It's because the Labor and Liberal parties won't force the big corporations to pay their fair share of tax. One in three of the biggest corporations in this country pays absolutely no tax whatsoever. Seventy-nine companies in Australia have gone 11 years, at least, without contributing a cent to this country, which made their obscene profits possible.
Gas corporations dig up our resources for free amid huge amounts of greenhouse gases, sell our resources overseas, walk away with billions of dollars in profits and pay no tax at all. When you go to work as a teacher, a cleaner, a hairdresser or a plumber and you are paying more tax than one in three of the largest corporations in this country, you know you are living in a system that is absolutely cooked, and you know you are living in a system that is rigged against you.
Coles and Woolworths pushed up their profits by 17 per cent and 14 per cent respectively during the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades. Do you know what? Companies like Coles and Woolworths have learned one thing in Australia: greed pays and price gouging pays.
Whether it's the supermarkets, airlines, banks or insurance companies, they're price gouging away because Labor and the Liberals will let them price gouge. They are raking in obscene profits and, in most cases, are paying either no tax or nowhere near their fair share of tax. They know that greed pays, because successive governments have shown them that there is no consequence for price gouging and greed if you are a big corporation.
Working people are paying the price for this. They are paying the price at the supermarket check-out. They are paying the price in their rents and mortgages.
They are paying the price on their insurance premiums. They are paying the price on their airline tickets, if they are lucky enough to be able to afford those things. They are paying it when their kids can't see a dentist or when their wages are not keeping up with the bills that they have to pay.
That's because this economy, crafted by the neoliberal duo in this place, the duopoly of Labor and Liberal, rewards greed and punishes effort. This is a system built to protect wealth, not to share wealth. Governments give away billions in things like fossil fuel subsidies every year and billions in property tax breaks to housing speculators that make homes more expensive.
All the while, they say to people: 'There's no money. There's not enough money for housing, not enough money for health and not enough need to raise income support above the poverty line.' There is enough money for those things. What there's not enough of is political will.
Inequality in this country is not an accident. It's not a bug in the system. Inequality in Australia is a feature of our economic system.
It is the result of decisions made in this building to keep the wealthy happy, to keep the big corporations happy, to keep the big political donors happy, to protect the profit models of corporations and to cling to an economic model that is deeply and bitterly unfair and that fails most people in this country. The Prime Minister's decision to override his Treasurer and his plan to just creep the balance a little bit more towards fairness and tax the ultrarich sends a clear message: the top end are going to be looked after, and they're going to be looked after whether we have a Labor or a Liberal government in this country.
Looking after the top end, looking after the big corporations and looking after the superwealthy one per cent is why we still have a housing crisis. That is why wages are so stagnant. That is why billionaires have, in some cases, doubled their wealth since the start of the pandemic.
If we made big corporations pay their fair share of tax, if we taxed extreme wealth in this country, we could fix the housing crisis, we could expand Medicare to include dental health and mental health and we could guarantee people an income that they could actually live on with a modicum of dignity. The money is there; what is lacking is the political will. Greed has been written into our tax laws and our economic settings.
It's been normalised for decades by successive duopoly governments, who serve the same donors and take advice from the same lobbyists. But here is the thing: this deeply, bitterly unfair society and economic system does not have to be so deeply and bitterly unfair for so many people. The rampant inequality in Australia can be undone.
We can actually make the superwealthy, the megarich, pay their fair share of tax by taxing wealth. We can make the big corporations pay their fair share of tax by putting in place an excess profits tax on corporate profits. If we were to do just those two things, we could not only fund dental into Medicare, we could not only wipe all student debt, we could not only increase income support above the poverty line; we could do all those things, and more, and still have plenty left over.
A better world is possible. I'm here today to challenge this sense of despair, this lack of hope, in so many people. It's not their fault that they feel like that.
The reason they feel like that is that the political duopoly in this country want people to live in despair. They want people to live without hope for a better, fairer life for themselves and their families, because hope, genuinely held hope, is a dangerous thing for the status quo—a very dangerous thing for the status quo. So I say to people: have hope and believe that a better world is possible, because it is.
The Greens are going to fight every day for a better, fairer society and a better, fairer economy to end the deeply and bitterly unfair wealth inequality in our society—to make the megawealthy, the extremely rich, pay some tax on that wealth that in many cases continues to grow at eye-watering rates, despite the fact that those very people do little or, in some cases, nothing to see that wealth grow.
It is grossly inequitable and grossly unfair. I say this as I close my contribution. I understand that you don't want people to feel hope.
I understand you want people to live in despair—and that, unfortunately, tragically, is where millions of Australians live. And I've been there in my life. I know what it's like to live in grinding poverty.
I know what it's like to not be able to afford to pay the rent. I know what it's like to have to eat crappy food because you can't afford a decent feed for yourself. I know what that's like.
When you live that way, it is very easy to despair; it is very easy to lose hope. You can't see a way out of the mire of poverty that you are entrenched in. I totally get why people lose hope.
I totally get why people live in despair. That's why the millions of Australians that live in grinding poverty—including many who work full time, I might add—need champions in this place, and that's what the Australian Greens are here to do: to fight to tax wealth and to fight to make big corporations pay their fair share so we can have a fairer, more equitable society in this country.