Why would anyone trust a system that denies them justice? Today in Parliament, Abigail called out the cruelty at the heart of Labor's politics, cutting disability supports to save a quick buck while refusing to touch a $17 billion gas tax. When government fails people, democracy pays the price. The only hope lies in a resurgent progressive left capable of delivering the fundamental political shift Australia desperately needs.
Abigail said:
Across Australia, as is the case in other countries with long democratic traditions, like the United States, the United Kingdom and France, confidence in democratic institutions is in decline. A recent Gallup poll report shows worrying trends when it comes to our satisfaction with government, institutions and the economy. Australia polls second highest in the world for the percentage of adults who say that affording basics of food and shelter is the biggest problem facing the country. In a country as rich as Australia, a whopping 29 per cent of us are, effectively, saying poverty is our country's biggest issue. Some 75 per cent of us are dissatisfied with the availability of affordable housing—equal first in the world in terms of our levels of discontent. Younger people in particular are despairing, with 17 per cent more young people angsting over their basic material needs than older people. Is it any wonder that people in Australia are fed up with governments and disengaging from democracy?
Greg Jericho wrote an excellent piece in The Guardian today about, among other things, the lack of media outrage about the NDIS budget cuts. It made me think more broadly and about the, frankly, overwhelming numbers of people who contact my office looking for help after being failed by one or more systems that the New South Wales Government is responsible for. They tell me of failures in the Family Court system, putting children in harm's way. They complain of being misidentified or left unprotected in domestic and family violence matters. They are denied access to emergency accommodation because of unfathomable bureaucratic errors. Countless people experience real trauma at the hands of the broken workers compensation system, not to mention all the people trying to get just a scrap of support in the face of an NDIS system stacked against them.
These are stories after stories of people coming up against a system that looks to all the world like it was actively designed to deny them justice, support or outcomes. That negative experience is often the first and most significant encounter that many people have with a core part of government machinery—their first time asking for help from the official face of society. The resulting confusion, frustration, anger and depression experienced at the hands of "the system" leaves deep cuts across our collective faith in so-called democratic institutions. If you cannot get basic medical care, if you cannot get justice for obvious wrongdoings, if you and your family do not get the protection you reasonably expect, and if the structures and institutions and processes in our society well and truly fail you or the people you know and love, why on earth would you care if it all came crashing to the ground? Why would you not be tempted to embrace populist right movements that portray themselves as fundamentally different and as the opposite of the establishment and the status quo that is wreaking so much damage?
In the face of increasingly broken government systems, the major parties are doubling down and punishing the most vulnerable people in our society, exacerbating discontent and pushing people further away. Most recently, the Federal Labor Government has taken a sledgehammer to the entitlements of 160,000 disabled people rather than actually deal with the systemic issues caused by a marketised approach to disability services and the failure to rein in fraud by bad-faith actors. The Federal Government's budget decisions reveal its real priorities. Its "tough decisions" only go one way—tough on the most vulnerable and usually poorest people, while giving an easy ride to big corporates and the ultra wealthy. The Federal Government could have raised a whopping $17 billion a year from a tax on gas exports—one of the most popular revenue-raising measures ever polled—but instead it has chosen to rip away vital supports from the disability community in order to save a quick buck.
In a world feeling increasingly unfair and unjust, with more people in our country than ever before unable to make ends meet, Labor has embarked on a politics marked by cruelty. Again, just as we saw NSW Labor do with its cuts to workers compensation, Federal Labor has worked with the media to demonise individuals reliant on the NDIS to manufacture consent for brutal cuts that will see people genuinely in need of support having their lifelines ripped away from them. While bleating about social cohesion when it suits Labor's political strategy, it is happily putting the boot in to those it is denying support to, encouraging society to turn on them before forcing them into lives of exclusion and despair.
Thankfully, there is still a glimmer of hope for our democracy. We may be some years behind some other countries, but across the world we are seeing a resurgence of the true progressive left of politics too, a political movement that truly cares about improving people's material circumstances. With the acknowledgment that the two-party system is crumbling, there is room for a different way of doing things, for multi-party governments and for a fundamental shift in Australian politics. For all the people suffering in what is supposed to be a lucky country, that cannot come soon enough.
Read the transcript in Hansard here.
28 May 2026