Thursday, 5 March 2026

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:06): Right now people are at their limit. Every day people feel the pressure of increasing bills and grocery prices. Rents and mortgage payments are rising. Wages just are not keeping up. Everyone is paying more and getting less. Some will say that groceries, electricity bills and housing are too expensive because of migrants, or wind turbines, or some other dog whistle to keep us all distracted. But what is really happening is big corporations and billionaires have captured governments in this country. It does not matter which side of politics you look at; both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party are paid for by these same corporate interests. It is all the same. But we can choose a different path, and we can do this by uniting as one. It is time that the big corporations pay us the tax that they owe. It is time for the big polluting companies to pay to repair the damage that they have done to our planet and to our environment. It is time for the government to build tens of thousands of public homes and to cap rents so that no-one has to worry about where they are going to sleep tonight. It is time for the people to decide how their community is run and to demand better than Labor and better than Liberal. It is time.