Matters of Urgency — Privatisation

Sue Lines

Senator McKim has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, shown at item 13 of today's Order of Business:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the government to finally acknowledge that Australians are paying the price of privatisation, that privatisation has delivered nothing but pain for Australians through privatised profits, higher costs, and worse services, and that essential public services must return to public ownership.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Larissa Waters

At the request of Senator McKim, I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the government to finally acknowledge that Australians are paying the price of privatisation, that privatisation has delivered nothing but pain for Australians through privatised profits, higher costs, and worse services, and that essential public services must return to public ownership_._

It feels like you can't leave the house these days without it costing you money. Why is life so expensive? One reason is that everything is being run by big corporations to prop up even bigger corporate profits. In years gone by, services were run for people. But over the last few decades, Labor and the Liberals have sold them off, meaning that we pay more and in most cases get less. Toll roads, airport parking, health insurance and medicine—they sold them. Electricity, airlines and ports were sold. Power stations and banks were sold too. Child care, employment services and railways—they sold them as well. All the things we need that used to be owned and run by the government have been sold to private corporations.

This huge sell off, this privatisation of our essential services, has been a very deliberate plan of both Labor and Liberal governments. When public services are run for the benefit of people, they're cheaper, better quality and create better-paying jobs. Instead, both these lots sold them. Now we all pay more, and we get lower quality services so that big corporations can make billions of dollars in profits. It's no wonder that people are fed up with politics. These services should be run for you and not run for corporate profits.

Some of the biggest companies on the Australian stock market are the ones that used to be owned by us—companies like Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank and Telstra. They're in private hands now, completely unaccountable. Labor and the Liberals have been selling off everything that isn't nailed down, and every time we've all ended up paying more for less. That's what we mean when we say the major parties are selling you out for corporate profit. It's not a slogan; it's who they're working for. Whether it's your gas and electricity, child care and aged care, your phone, your internet, the airport or the freeway—every time you use them, big corporations are making massive profits, and it's made life more expensive for all of us. Add to that the fact that one in three big corporations pays no tax, and that this government—and the last—are not fixing that, and it's a pretty clear picture that we're all being ripped off.

Public services should stay in public hands, run for people and not run for private profit. It's time that essential public services were returned to public ownership. If you don't want to feel like leaving the house means forking out money for nothing, then stop voting for the parties that are selling you out and start backing the people that are here fighting for you—and that's the Greens.

Claire Chandler

It is very clear from this motion what the Greens want. They want to see bigger government. They want government in your lives every day, getting bigger and bigger. But it puzzles me that we have an urgency motion on this here in the Senate chamber today, because, under this Labor government, thanks to their reckless spending, we already have the biggest government on record—and that already comes at a high cost to Australians. The Greens are also concerned about worse services, but that is also what Australians are already seeing under this Labor government. The budget delivered back in May contained higher taxes for Australians, reduced support for older Australians, reduced support for veterans—the list goes on. In contrast, the coalition is focused on shaping a smaller government that delivers the essential services that Australians rely on, taking the pressure off inflation and interest rates, and restoring our living standards. We know that spending should be prudent and responsible, minimising the need to collect additional tax and to further burden Australian families and small businesses.

Under this Labor government, government spending has hit its highest point in four decades outside of the pandemic. That is the equivalent of every taxpayer having to pay $5,000 extra each and every year. Because of Labor's out-of-control spending, Australians are paying more for everything due to high inflation. Rising demand from government has reduced the labour and capital available for the private sector, leading to higher inflation and higher interest rates. Inflation today is higher in Australia than in every major advanced economy, and it has been well above the RBA's target band for the past 11 months—well before the conflict that broke out in Iran. This has resulted in interest rates today sitting at their highest level since 2011, under the former Labor government, after 15 interest rate rises. Roy Morgan measures that more than 1½ million households are suffering mortgage stress right now. Under Labor, our living standards have recorded the largest collapse in our history and in the developed world. This expansion of the government's share of the economy is also weighing on Australia's productivity. It is not a pretty picture.

To fund its spending addiction, this Labor government has increased taxes on families and small businesses, and it's hiding the true cost of its fiscal mismanagement by pushing more and more spending off-budget. But 'off-budget' simply means 'off the balance sheet'. The spending is still there and taxpayers are still paying for it. Labor's budget shows deep and deteriorating deficits totalling $150 billion over five years. On top of this, there is another $114 billion of hidden spending on the balance sheet, taking the real, deep structural deficits to well over $264 billion. This government was warned right back at the start of 2023 by the IMF that the proliferation of the federal government's so-called off-budget funds risked adding to inflation pressures.

What have Australians seen as a result of the billions spent on these funds? We've had reporting by the Financial Review that almost half of the $15 billion in the National Reconstruction Fund is now designed to bleed taxpayer cash with investments that do not clear the government's borrowing costs. The $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, at last count, has only completed 1,432 homes, and it's as clear as mud whether those completed homes were actually built or merely acquired. The HAFF is so bad that the ANAO has audited the scheme. It's also audited the management of the $20 billion Rewiring the Nation Fund.

Under the coalition's plan, we will end Labor's corporate welfare like the National Reconstruction Fund; end Labor's climate bureaucracy, including Rewiring the Nation; and end Labor's housing bureaucracy, namely their flagship Housing Australia Future Fund. Labor's failed attempts at public interventions into the private sector are highlighting exactly why we have to focus on the delivery of essential services. All of these funds, remember, were seeded with billions in borrowed money and Australians have the trillion dollars debt bomb, growing to $1.25 trillion, to show for it. When that happens, interest payments will hit more than $42 billion a year, or more than $80,000 a minute. The Greens talk of higher costs. Australians know they are already paying the higher costs of this government. They have the higher interest bill and the higher taxes to show for it.

Tammy Tyrrell

I thank Senator McKim for his motion, but this government is focused on delivering more real change—not arguing about how things are owned. From 1 July: lower taxes, higher pay, a fair go for all; another tax cut for every taxpayer—part of five rounds which will leave the average worker up to $2,800 a year better off. A new thousand-dollar instant tax deduction was introduced to deliver lower, simpler taxes for 6.2 million workers. Payday super began, increasing the retirement incomes of millions of Australians. Price gouging by supermarkets has been banned—thank God for that! Paid parental leave is expanded to a full six months. Around 2.6 million Australians have benefited from regular indexation of social security payment rates and thresholds. Medicare urgent care clinics have become a permanent part of Medicare. Record public hospital funding began flowing under a new five-year agreement with states and territories.

More broadly, we've done a heap to help with the cost of living. We have done cheaper child care for more than one million families; cheaper medicines, saving Australians $2.6 billion; three days of guaranteed subsidised early education for an additional 100,000 families; Free TAFE has 800,000 enrolments; the largest increase in rent assistance in 30 years; student debt relief for more than three million Australians; and more bulk-billing with an extra 1,400 GP clinics and 3,800 bulk-billing practices in total.

Yes, we can have a conversation about privatisation or public owned services, but what really matters is delivering for people. Any organisation can fail or have bad management, regardless of whether it's publicly or privately owned. Look no further than the useless attempts by the Tasmanian Liberal state government. After 12 years of useless government, Tasmanians are sick of the roundabout of neglect and then deflect. Only a Labor government will take public services seriously, and deliver these services properly, to deliver real change for Australians and Tasmanians.

Tasmanians are sick of being told by Liberal governments that they know how to run public assets, and then watching them prove the absolute opposite. Let's start with the TT-Line. That's a publicly owned company. Our ferries. Our port. What did the Tasmanian government do with it? They spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars building two new Spirit of Tasmania ferries—ferries that were too big for the berth Tasmania actually had ready for them. What galactically stupid failure! A $90 million upgrade turned into nearly $500 million. Those ships sat parked—one in Scotland, one in Geelong—burning through hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars a month for a service Tasmanians couldn't even use. All up, they spent more than $700 million above what they told us it would cost. A deputy premier lost his job over it. That's not what public ownership failing looks like; that's what incompetence, wearing a public ownership costume, looks like.

Then there's TasInsure. The Liberals went to an election promising Tasmanians a real state owned insurer, something to actually take on a market that was taking the piss out of families and small businesses. They got elected on it. And then they quietly gutted it into a statutory authority that doesn't insure anyone. It just sits alongside the same insurers it was meant to challenge. Tasmania's public hospitals are also being crippled under the Liberal state government, despite the Labor federal government providing them with record funding. All the gear and no idea. Being told not to come to the LGH in Launnie because there are not enough beds—that isn't good enough.

Tasmanians are sick of their basic services not being up to scratch because of the state Liberals being useless at delivering. This isn't an argument against public ownership. Tasmanians still believe our ferries, our insurance, our essential services should belong to us, but you can't run public ownership on training wheels and thought bubbles. The state Liberal government is clearly not fit to run and look after Tasmanians. Let's stop flogging a dead horse. Give Tasmania a government that actually knows how to manage what it owns, because this Liberal state government has proven time and time again it can't. We need change. We need a Labor state government that values Tasmanians and delivers the public service that they deserve.

Long debate text truncated.