MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (16:29): Australia desperately needs genuinely progressive tax reform. I say to the Australian people: if you are working harder and harder and falling further and further behind, if you're struggling to pay the rent, if you're struggling to pay the mortgage, if you're struggling to get in to the housing market, if you're struggling to see a doctor, if you're struggling to pay your kids' school fees, and you are wondering where all the money's gone, check the bank balances of the billionaires.
Check the bank balances of the one per cent because that is where your money is going. While you work harder and harder and pay decent amounts of tax on your income, the wealthiest one per cent of Australians are effectively paying no tax at all as their bank balances go through the roof. Let's be really clear about something: you cannot work your way to $1 billion, let alone $2 billion, $5 billion, $10 billion or $20 billion.
You can't work your way to that kind of money. The only way you can make that kind of money is if you've got a massive amount of capital to start with and you invest that capital—you buy things, you buy property portfolios, you buy shares and you put your money in tax advantaged trusts. Your wealth goes up, and the government doesn't make you pay your fair share of tax on your wealth.
Unlike if you go to work as a cleaner, if you go to work in hospitality, if you go to work as a nurse or if you go to work as a carpenter—you are paying your fair share of tax. Why shouldn't the billionaires pay their fair share of tax? Why shouldn't the one per cent pay their fair share of tax?
Why shouldn't the big, price-gouging, polluting corporations pay their fair share of tax? The question actually is: why don't they pay their fair share of tax? I'll tell you why: it's because they've captured the political class in this country from the Liberal Party and the National Party to the Labor Party and now to One Nation.
Every single one of you is in the pockets of the one per cent and the big, polluting, price-gouging corporations and is in cahoots with each other to make sure the super wealthy don't pay their fair share of tax and to make sure the big corporations don't pay their fair share of tax. The result is an economy where wealth flows upwards into the pockets of the few while the many work harder and harder and fall further and further behind.
Shame on the lot of you!