MATTERS OF URGENCY

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (17:04): Indeed; thank you, Acting Deputy President O'Neill. The Labor Party has joined with the coalition to flog off public assets for decades. Do you know what happens to Australians when politicians sell off publicly owned assets?

They end up paying more. Over the past 20 years, Australians have been paying more and more for the things the public used to own. You can track this stuff over time.

In the last 20 years, after states privatised their electricity generators, their grids and their electricity and gas retailers, gas and electricity prices have gone up on average 5.8 per cent a year. The last few decades have seen public money ripped out of universities and replaced with HECS and other private fees, and surprise, surprise the cost of going to university has gone up 5.2 per cent a year.

It's the same with insurance. Having flogged off all the public insurers, like GIO, the cost of insurance has gone up 5.3 per cent a year over the last two decades. While 5.8 per cent a year may not seem like much over one year, do that over two decades—make it cumulative—and the costs balloon.

At the same time, the average price for everything else that hasn't been privatised grew by just 2.8 per cent a year, which is barely half. This has been a project designed to line the pockets of big corporations and make you pay for it, and it's working, at least, for big corporations and their billionaire owners. We've all seen MPs from Labor, One Nation and the coalition crying their crocodile tears over the cost of living, with people paying more and more for basic things like energy, transport, banking and insurance.

But listen here today. It's those very same MPs who made it this way. All of you lot sold off our public assets, then you sat back and watched while big corporations made bank and now you're pretending to care.

The public used to own Telstra. Now, more than two decades on from that fire sale, we regularly see massive outages that threaten lives and huge parts of the country struggling to have enough reception to send or get a text, and the costs for your phone bill keep going up. Yet the CEO of privatised Telstra—privatised by Labor—saw fit to have an 11 per cent pay rise to $7 million a year, and the company made a neat $2.4 million in profit in the last financial year.

If it were publicly owned, that profit could've been used to fund hospitals and schools. Now that Telstra is privately owned it funds private jets and champagne, and some crumbs fall into the pockets of Labor and the coalition as political donations to keep the whole boondoggle running. The people of Australia used to own Qantas.

Labor sold it off. We now see it screwing unfair profits by selling tickets for ghost flights and illegally sacking 2,000 workers. All the while the CEO that left in disgrace in 2023 was still getting $3.8 million in shares as a bonus in 2025, which is two years after he left.

You'd almost think that this mob and their paid-up supporters in here had rigged the system. The public used to own the Commonwealth Bank, the state insurance companies and our airports. They were all sold by you lot.

That's why parking costs a hundred bucks at the airport, why you can't afford to insure your car and why more and more of your pay packet is sucked up to feed the multibillion-dollar profits of the Commonwealth Bank and others. Privatisation is fuelling wealth inequality, driving up inflation and supercharging the cost of living, and it's a rort. Labor looked at public goods that served the people—not profit—and they ripped them away from you to give to their ultrawealthy donors and mates.

And it's continuing to happen today. They just can't help themselves. The Albanese government is currently flogging off public land in cities as part of its Defence estate audit.

Labor in Victoria is eyeing how they can privatise Melbourne's water system. Whenever it's a choice between the community deciding what to do with public assets and pocketing some quick cash from their developer mates or vampire investors, Labor will always take the money and they'll be cheered on by One Nation and the coalition. If you think these are the people who will take on big tech, I've got a data centre shaped bridge to sell you.

If you want public control over AI, public services owned by the public and a system that puts you before corporate profits then we need to throw this lot out—all of them—because, despite how much they pretend to be different, they're all funded by the same corporate paymasters and they all deliver the same mush. Watch their votes today; watch them today. The Greens will be on one side, and the rest of this lot will be lined up over there, with their mates Alan Joyce and Gina Rinehart.