GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S SPEECH

Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (12:58): I rise to take note of the Governor-General's speech. It's an opportunity to do this nearly 12 months after the federal election—of course, the Governor-General gives the speech after our election—and, looking back over the last 12 months at the political landscape, the economic landscape and the developments in international spheres, make some really important observations.

Before I do that, I want to focus on the comments from the previous speaker about this 'net zero fantasy' that the Liberal-National coalition just can't seem to let go of. I totally agree that net zero is a terrible policy. It's nowhere near enough to act on the climate emissions that are polluting our planet and disrupting our economies, our agricultural communities and our communities right around the country.

We need to do much better on climate action. Net zero is a very weak policy and was always, in my opinion, designed to be a failure. Let's look at the economy to start with.

We've just passed some budget reform. I've lost count of how many speeches I've done in my 14-plus years in this place around getting rid of perverse incentives that have rigged the housing market in this country, largely to the benefit of the wealthy—perverse incentives like a capital gains tax concession and negative gearing that allows some Australians to have hundreds of houses at the expense of those who are trying to get into the housing market.

The government has used its mandate and has changed that. I am grateful for that. It is a small step in the right direction.

After many years of the Greens pushing the government to do this—obviously, Mr Shorten attempted to do this in the 2019 election—good on Mr Albanese and his government for changing these perverse incentives that have been so unfair for so many people. However, we would love to have seen the government go a lot further than that and change this inequality that is still locked in, because everyone who's got access to these benefits has got to keep them.

Of course, some young Australians are asking, 'Why didn't I get access to these incentives so that I could own multiple properties?' But, luckily, there are so many Australians out there that are grateful that the housing market now will be more accessible and, hopefully, more affordable, and that will occur over time. However, the Greens were very disappointed that the last budget had nothing for renters in this country.

It's something that we've fought for for many years. My colleague Senator Barbara Pocock has been doing fantastic work in this area, and, of course, prior to this parliament, Mr Max Chandler-Mather, from the other place, did some amazing work to raise the awareness of this political issue in this country. There are so many renters out there that need our assistance.

Of course, investing in housing supply will make a difference, but, at the end of the day, this government could have done a lot more to help renters in Australia. We've pushed hard to make price gouging illegal, particularly that by the big supermarkets. I want to give a shout-out to Senator Nick McKim from the Greens who's been leading on this issue for many, many years now—and, by the way, he achieved some fantastic outcomes in the last budget to help our economic system be much fairer.

We need to tax the gas companies in Australia. Once again, I suppose the privilege of being here for many years is I've seen all the debates we've had over the years about changing the petroleum resource rent tax and trying to claw back some money for the Australian people who own the resources that these companies have exploited. It is a very popular campaign that has been run by parliamentarians including, once again, my Greens colleague Senator Hodgins-May, who's been tirelessly campaigning to get a tax on gas, a 30 per cent minimum tax, and that's not going away.

That is not going away. This has resonated with so many Australians who want to see big resource companies pay their fair share. Imagine what we could do with the tens of billions of dollars of revenue if we actually tax these big multinational corporations, many of whom are polluting our planet and aren't paying for the damage that they're doing.

As I leave this place, I say watch that campaign build until it gets to a point, like getting rid of negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, it's going to be too hard for the government to ignore. There's no way that these companies that make billions of dollars in profits and are ruining our planet should be getting away with not paying a fair share on the resources that they extract that the Australian people own.

The Greens would like to see free public transport. It's another thing we've been fighting for at state level, at federal level and at local government level, all around the country—especially in a cost-of-living crisis—to do more to try and help Australians. We encourage them to use public transport not only because it lowers our emissions profile and it's good for the environment but also because it's a lot cheaper and a lot more efficient.

That's something that we'll continue to campaign on. Free child care and mental health care, getting mental health into Medicare and getting dental care into Medicare—once again, these are campaigns that have been long running that we will tirelessly continue to campaign on till we get there. And, of course, we want to see the billionaires in this country taxed.

Tax the one per cent, who not only own this colossal amount of wealth but seem to be quite happy to spend their wealth on manipulating our political system. The Greens think it's long overdue that these billionaires pay their fair share of tax. That's something that is also very popular and very doable that we will continue to campaign on.

At least I'm part of a party that is not just defined by what we don't like. I just listened to the previous speaker from the LNP talk about all the things the Liberals oppose. I've just given you 10 things that the Greens want to see, constructive policies that will make a difference.

But there are some things we do oppose that we are very concerned about, like the billions of dollars that are going towards AUKUS submarines. I want to give a shout-out to my colleague Senator Shoebridge for all the great work he's done over a long period of time to raise this with the Australian public. We are spending this money on submarines and tying ourselves to a US alliance that clearly can't be trusted.

There are so many other things we should doing in this space without spending that kind of money. I'd also like to give a shout-out to Senator Steele-John for the amazing work that he's done, in very difficult circumstances in recent months, to highlight the plight of those in this country on the NDIS who are facing cruel cuts and why we can find the money to support our most vulnerable in this community from other places, like cancelling AUKUS.

It's not that hard if you've got the political backbone. Since the election we've seen a couple of interesting and very alarming things occur. We've obviously seen a war in Iran.

Let me say here, today, that the Greens were the first and the only ones who stood up in this chamber the day this happened and said that this war, just like the war in Iraq nearly 20 years earlier, is doomed to fail. It was based on a lie and disinformation; the evidence is clear on that now. There was no plan and no strategy.

It was doomed to fail. It was going to be cruel and was going to put us all in a lot more hot water. And that's exactly what's happened.

I think the world has now woken up to that. Whether Mr Trump has woken up to that is another matter, of course, entirely. Nevertheless, it's been very hurtful, especially to Australians doing it tough.

Only recently, I was visiting remote and rural Australia with the rural and regional affairs committee. Out in places like Kununurra in Western Australia, there was no-one on the roads and no-one in the caravan parks. Businesses were going bust because of the price of fuel and concerns about the availability of fuel.

This has flooded all through our supply chains. It's impacting inflation and it's hurting Australians. And why?

Because of some maniac running a foreign country who has no-one around him—clearly there are no adults in the room—to try and prevent this kind of thing from happening. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess. That kind of uncertainty feeds into markets; it feeds into financial markets; it feeds into people's households and their decision-making; and it will continue to impact our economy until this mess is sorted out.

Of course, the Greens have called on the Labor government to do a lot more to distance itself from the US and to take a leadership role on the international stage. The same goes for the atrocities that we've been seeing in Gaza and in Lebanon. I'd like to give a shout-out to Senator Mehreen Faruqi for all the work she's done in just fearlessly raising these issues—that, once again, are now largely supported by the international community, including the key institutions that we rely on for peace and stability in our world, who are calling this out for what it is.

And many countries have joined in, too. Once again, we were the only ones in here doing that—the Greens showing leadership, another time. This is why people should vote for the Greens.

This is why we're needed, in this chamber, to hold any government to account. We've also seen the political anomaly of the very rapid rise of One Nation—an unprecedented rise in the polls, never seen before in Australian political history. I've talked about this in recent weeks: a 400 to 500 per cent rise in the polls has never happened to an established political party in Australian political history.

I am very concerned about what is behind this rise. This is a party that's had the same old tropes for 30 years. We have had a community that has wanted politicians to do better and is railing against the system.

They know the system's been corrupted; they know it doesn't represent them—and that's been the case since I've been here. We've seen the vote shift away from the major parties in the last 15 to 20 years. But, suddenly, One Nation's votes are up by 400 to 500 per cent in a very short period of time.

We've got a lot of work to do, to look at foreign interference in Australian democracy and what's behind this rise—an army of bots and trolls and shady interests, influencing Australia's democracy. We all should be very concerned about this and what the long-term impacts of this are going to be. But there is a message here for all of us.

The kinds of AI slopaganda and the rubbish that has been flooding social media platforms that are almost completely unregulated that have led to this have touched a raw nerve with many Australians. I accept that. Suddenly, they've noticed it, because they're being overwhelmed with this tsunami of misinformation and disinformation promoting Pauline Hanson.

We need to learn from this and understand that many Australians do want better. And we need to act to do that. I think I've outlined some of the key things we can do to help struggling ordinary Australians, but it will take political courage to do that.

Business as usual is not going to be an option in this chamber. It shouldn't be now, but I can tell you what: it's not going to be in the future. I'm not going to be here.

But the world is changing rapidly. The political world is changing rapidly. The information environment that dictates just about everything we do is changing so rapidly, with the advent of AI and the power of these foreign influence campaigns—and some of them, by the way, are out of the United States of America; I'm not just talking about Russian or Chinese influence, or troll armies in Vietnam.

This is where it's at right now, and we need to wake up to this.