I'll be fighting for a safe climate & healthy environment for our kids. Scroll down for developments as the summit takes place.

I want to start with the title of this bill: 'A Tax Plan for the COVID-19 Economic Recovery'. That's the first con job.

The bill does nothing to deal with the economic crisis that we are confronted with today. Why is that? Because we're in an economic crisis from this pandemic because we have a million people out of work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j5RUU5HkzE

We have people from the hospitality sector, the retail sector, the tourism sector, from the arts and entertainment industries who have all lost their jobs because of the restrictions and the health response that was needed. We are in a recession that overwhelmingly impacts young people. We are in a recession that overwhelmingly impacts women. We are in a recession where it is the working poor and the unemployed in this country who are carrying the burden. And what does this bill do? It doesn't address any of those economic crises. It doesn't make life better for the unemployed. It spends tens of billions of dollars helping people who are actually managing okay at the moment.

The millionaires of this country are doing pretty well in comparison with those who have lost their job. This legislation confronts us with choices. If the government have made a decision to spend billions of dollars and get that out the door to try and stimulate the economy in the midst of this economic crisis, they need to make choices as to where that money goes. What the government have decided to do in this budget and with this bill is to choose the wealthy over the poor. They have chosen men over women.

I rise to speak in opposition to this terrible piece of legislation, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020.

Firstly, I'd like to associate myself with the comments made by my colleague Senator Faruqi, who leads this area for the Australian Greens.

I am just gobsmacked at the dodgy deal done this week by Centre Alliance—Senator Griff and the member for Mayo, Rebekha Sharkie. After months of telling the South Australian people that they had problems with this bill, that they knew this piece of legislation was bad—bad for students, bad for the economy and bad for education—we have seen the most significant backflip Centre Alliance has done since Nick Xenophon left this building. They have sold out South Australian students. They have sold out families. They have sold out our university sector. They are going to make our South Australian economy suffer even more.

Our natural environment is in crisis - logging, mining and climate change are polluting our environment and pushing our native animals to extinction.

But it’s about to get even worse. Right now the Morrison Government is trying to push through new laws that will make it easier for mining companies and big developers to get approval for projects that will damage our environment even more. The government is slashing environment protections so big corporations can make more profits.

Laws with weak protections and no independent watchdog will leave our environment vulnerable to destruction - koalas will be driven to extinction, our forests destroyed, and our oceans polluted.

We cannot let them get away with it. This Government cannot be trusted with protecting our environment.

It has been months since the Prime Minister stood up with Guy Sebastian and announced funding for the struggling arts industry and we still haven't seen any money flowing. 

Wonderful to chat with Australian Comedian Celia Paquola 😁 Talking about all things lockdown, the arts, Australian stories and late-night online shopping!

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Talking with Kate about the fact that our Australian artists, musicians and entertainers are hurting terribly right now.
We need to save our arts and entertainment industry from collapsing - so as we come out of COVID we still have art, music and stories to enrich our souls and help us understand and celebrate who we are as a community. Sign here if you agree.

Follow my Instagram channel for #LivewithShy on Thursday evenings at 7.30pm (AEST) 7.00pm (CST).