MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (17:22): The neoliberal project so beloved of Labor and coalition governments over many decades has broken Australia's social contract. People used to be told that if they worked hard, if they got a good education, they could afford the basics that we all need to lead a good and dignified life. But we can't say that to young people anymore.
Just ask any young person how things are going for them right now. Youth allowance is below the poverty line. Young people are working two or three jobs just to get through uni.
They're paying tens of thousands of dollars for a degree their parents and just about everyone in government got for free, while they watch artificial intelligence smash their future career opportunities. If they do get a job, their wages are buying less and less and less over time. Meanwhile, it's almost impossible to buy a house unless you've got super wealthy parents, which leaves most young people living in rentals where the landlord can hike the rents just as often as they can get away with.
And you've got climate change and international geopolitical instability looming large over all of that. Labor has been in power for four years and things are getting worse, not better, for young Australians. Bill Kelty is absolutely right that the Treasurer's economic spin is insulting, and it's particularly insulting for young people.
Honestly, Labor sometimes forget they're even in government. They need to make a choice—a choice to do something, a choice to make young people's lives better rather than just produce spin while young people watch their future turn to dust. Here are just five things that Labor could do today, right now, to improve the lives of young people here in Australia—make TAFE and uni genuinely free, freeze rents, put dental and mental health into Medicare, stop approving new coal and gas mines and stop supporting the genocide in Palestine.
You can pay for what you need to pay for out of that list by making big corporations and the superwealthy one per cent pay their fair share of tax. Unlike Labor, the Greens will always be here for young Australians.