We gather today on the lands of the Ngunnawal people. I acknowledge their ongoing care for this place and pay my respect to Ngunnawal elders past and present, as well as any other families with connections to these lands.
I came here today wanting to deliver a simple message to the many people around our country feeling like politics as usual has failed them.
I wanted to say that it doesn’t have to be like this.
But after the attack we saw on Dr Helen Haines on Monday there are a few other things I want to say first.
To Helen, to Phil, their three kids and the rest of the family, to Helen’s team who I understand are watching from Wangaratta and Chiara here today and to your whole community - we love you.
Helen, you are the best of us.
As I often say to people, Helen is the MP we all wish we had.
Working with you is one of the great privileges of serving in our parliament.
My volunteers love hosting yours when they come to Canberra.
And I have loved spending time with you in Indi over the last few years.
You are a beacon of integrity. You make our politics better.
That someone would deliberately hurt you, I find unfathomable.
And I know I speak for so many people when I say that we are sending you love and hoping your recovery is as quick and thorough as possible.
We must meet this attack on you by doubling down on the values you represent, that you champion so hard in our parliament.
Democracy. Transparency. Accountability. Care. Kindness.
Now is the time to think about what brings us together. To defend our shared values, our democracy, and our freedom to live as Australians.
As the government has noted, threats against politicians in this country have escalated at an alarming rate.
I know it’s something my wife Emma worries about every day, as do so many families around the country.
Having the opportunity to represent a community I love - in large part due to many of the people in this room - is a huge privilege.
It's a cliche but it's true, and it’s something I think about a lot.
It’s also a privilege that comes with sacrifice - especially for people based in the far-flung corners of our great country.
And increasingly, it comes with risk. Especially for women.
And that’s scary.
This week one of those political threats we’ve seen in increasing numbers was carried out for the first time against a sitting member of our parliament. Against Helen.
The investigation into what happened is obviously ongoing. I want to be sure not to pre-empt any of that.
But I think we do need to acknowledge that much of the anger, the division, the at times incredibly hateful comments that have festered in this age of anonymous social media accounts, has spilled over into the real world.
Nothing can ever justify that.
We need to call out the ways this has been fed, encouraged and used for political advantage.
Politics should be a contest of ideas, not who can whip up the most hate or spread the most misinformation.
If anything, what has happened to Helen has made me more determined to stand here today and say what I have to say.
I’m here because I believe we have a great democracy, one that’s worth defending. A democracy that can better serve all of us.
Today I want to talk about exactly that.
About acknowledging how the current two party system is letting us down.
And what I really want to say to the people who are disappointed, disillusioned and in some cases angry with politics, is maybe even more important now.
There is another option.
One that’s not reflected in the polls that have captured people’s attention.
And one that does not involve violence, hatred or division.
Our political system is capable of doing a better job of putting people first.
Talking to Canberrans and communities right around the country, I hear how frustrated and fed up people are.
And rightly so. I feel it too.
Australians care deeply about our country - the people and places we love.
And the future we’re leaving our kids.
Most of the problems we face were created by us and they can be solved by us.
But that means electing politicians willing to listen to Australians and listen to experts.
To come with solutions not slogans.
People willing to adopt evidence-based answers that address the root causes of the problems we’re facing.
And to think long-term.
We are not making decisions like we plan to be here for a long time.
That has to change.
What we are facing is a political system that too often puts powerful interests ahead of people.
A system where, apparently, the only way to bring down inflation is for people to lose their jobs and suffer under rising interest rates.
At the same time over 1,000 big companies, including household names like Optus, Transurban and Adani, pay no company tax. Zero.
And worse still, some of the companies making billions extracting and selling our natural resources don’t contribute their fair share.
It's no wonder so many Australians are questioning whether the system is working for them.
They're working hard, doing everything they can, but still struggling to pay the mortgage or rent, put food on the table and give their kids the opportunities they had growing up.
Too often people are telling politicians how tough things are, only to get some talking points or a long government shopping list of things they’ve done in response.
And so people are turning away, turning towards something different or turning off altogether.
I’m increasingly convinced that the answer isn’t more of the same, just in another colour.
We don’t need more recycled political candidates, former staffers and others from the political class dancing to the tune of vested interests.
We need people from outside politics putting their communities ahead of everything else, including the party position.
It’s time we took the next step toward a more representative democracy.
Towards a coalition - not your Matt Canavan/Angus Taylor type - but of community independents holding balance of power and governing in minority.
While minority government is often rubbished by the major parties - which you’d have to say is a bit of a self-serving take - if we actually look at the evidence, its bad reputation from some quarters isn’t warranted.
It’s also the way we are already headed.
Taken together, there are already more independents [16] in the parliament today than there are either Greens [11] or One Nation [6].
It's time for the Australian people to take their power back. And we have a great democratic system that allows us to do just that.
In 2028 people could have the chance to vote for something better than a two-party system that’s no longer working for us.
Now please don’t get ahead of yourselves with “Pocock launches bid for PM” headlines - that’s NOT what I’m announcing today.
My ambition is much bigger than that. I want to be part of building a political system that actually delivers for Australians, no matter who is Prime Minister.
What I am saying is that I see an opportunity at the next election for a new kind of community political collective.
In Bean, Canberra, Fenner, Fisher, Fremantle and let’s not forget Grayndler, to name just a few, there are communities organising.
Campaigning on positive ideas.
I want to work with them.
I want to use what I’ve learned over the past four and a half years to help.
Because the system is stacked against outsiders.
I know because I came to politics as one.
As some of my colleagues like to point out - I’ve never been in the executive and don’t know what it is like to be in government.
My learning curve over the past few years has been very steep.
But I see that as an advantage.
Politics shouldn’t be for a political class - it should be for all of us.
Like many Australians, I’d been so frustrated seeing politicians ignore what seemed like clear solutions to problems we’re facing or implementing half-measure patch-up jobs.
Since being elected I’ve seen how the political process gets in the way of the solutions being implemented. Solutions that actually deal with the root causes of the problems we're facing.
It has been heartbreaking and, at times, crushing.
Being a politician was not something I dreamed of doing.
But here I am addressing the National Press Club as a Senator for the ACT because I was asked by a community I love to represent them.
We talk a lot in politics about numbers. Often very big numbers. Those numbers are about people’s lives. We can’t lose sight of them.
So today I want to share three numbers and three stories that underline the need for us to build something better together.
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The first number is 80%.
That’s the percentage of lobbyists not on the lobbyist register.
And contrary to popular opinion I don’t hate lobbyists.
Lobbying plays a legitimate role in our democracy. But it needs to be done out in the open, with transparency and appropriate regulation.
Not in the dark behind closed doors.
We need ministerial diaries to be published.
We need a strong, independently enforced lobbying code of conduct that applies equally to so-called “in-house” lobbyists as well as third party lobbyists, with meaningful penalties.
We need to close the revolving door between Ministers’ offices and industry, and we need to end cash-for-access.
The major parties have resisted the efforts of the crossbench to get some reform at every turn.
Only now, grudgingly, do we see some small concession to transparency with sponsored passes.
We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
Why?
Because lobbyists have extraordinary access to decision makers and an outsized influence over policies that impact all of us.
It erodes trust in politics when people learn that taxpayers foot the bill to fly the whole ministry around the country for business forums that are nothing more than fundraising fronts.
Or that federal politicians accepted a quarter of a million dollars in free tickets to sporting and other events during the debate on gambling reform.
Which brings me to my first story.
A few years ago I heard from Kate and her family.
They told me about their son and brother. A young man in the prime of his life struggling with a crippling gambling addiction. He fought hard to break it, sought help and had a supportive family - much loved by two sisters, his parents, grandparents and girlfriend.
But he couldn’t escape a predatory industry that works tirelessly to keep people addicted.
The relentless ads, the cruel inducements.
In the end his family found his body with a heartbreaking note detailing his struggle with gambling addiction and his conclusion that it was better for everyone if he was no longer around.
His family bravely shared their tragic story hoping to ensure no other family would have to endure the pain they experienced.
They pleaded with the parliament to completely ban gambling advertising and to end the harmful inducements that took away their brother and son.
Despite multiple attempts, they couldn’t get a meeting with the Prime Minister or the Communications Minister.
The most they got was a letter - not even from the Minister herself, but from an adviser.
The gambling companies, on the other hand, had plenty of access. And ultimately secured reform they could live with - even if it costs more Australians their lives.
Despite 80% of Australians supporting a ban on gambling ads, the government seemed all too happy to buckle to an industry that preys on people like Kate’s brother.
This is what it looks like when vested interests win and the public loses.
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It’s a familiar picture highlighted by my second number - $17 billion - and a story about state capture. I know you all saw this one coming.
That’s how much we could conservatively raise from a 25% gas export tax. Every. Single. Year.
It’s money that belongs to Australians.
This goes to who we are as a country. What we value about each other and the future.
While we’re constantly told we don’t have the money to invest in the solutions to problems we’re facing, the gas giants have taken our country for an absolute ride and successive governments have let them.
When our community stood up and pushed for a gas tax we were told - “now is not the right time.”
When will it be the right time?
We were told not to worry because Petroleum Resource Rent Tax would deliver more in the future and that gas companies pay heaps of other taxes.
But we should get paid for the actual gas. Gas that belongs to all of us.
Inpex hasn’t paid any PRRT at all. EVER.
Woodside’s PRRT payments are going DOWN year on year.
In fact, according to Treasury, at the end of the decade we’ll receive $1.25 billion in revenue from PRRT a year. Pretty paltry when in the same year Australians will be paying almost as much in passport fees and more than double in beer excise. Cheers to that, I guess.
And on corporate tax - Santos Limited has paid nothing - zero company tax for 11 years in a row, despite $51.85 billion in revenue.
This has to change. And it can.
Despite being wealthy enough to give our gas away for free, we’re told every budget that we can’t afford this or that, including lifting our social security payments above the poverty line.
I’ve heard so many stories about what the current rates of JobSeeker and Youth Allowance mean for some of our fellow Aussies.
One that has stuck with me was from a single mum I met a few years ago. I’ll call her Susan.
Susan didn’t want to live on Jobseeker. She loved working, but she had been struggling to find a job.
“Living” on Jobseeker meant Susan had to move her one remaining light bulb from room to room around the house.
She couldn’t afford meat or fresh veggies and often skipped meals to save money so she could afford her prescriptions.
Susan broke down telling me hadn’t eaten meat for so long that when her neighbour was away and asked her to look after their dog, she cooked up some of the dog mince for herself.
And it’s not just adults like Susan.
In Australia three quarters of a million children live below the poverty line. One in six children right here in Canberra are growing up in poverty today.
How is that acceptable?
A 25% gas export tax could help change that, allowing us to have a social security system that keeps people above the poverty line.
It won’t solve everything but - together with axing the fuel tax credit for big miners - it would be a great start.
Revenue from a gas export tax is something my team and I often use to put things in perspective.
How about an extra 100,000 Support at Home packages to stop thousands of older Australians dying on the waitlist?
Less than two months of gas export tax.
Having a program that ensures every Australian who has lost their nose or eye to cancer can afford a prosthetic replacement to fill the hole in their face?
3 hours of a gas export tax.
Now let me take that a step further and contrast the free gas these multinationals are given and the billions they get in subsidies with what we invest in preserving so much of what makes this continent so incredible.
We spend just 6 cents out of every $100 in the federal budget on on-ground biodiversity and nature conservation programs.
10 days of a gas export tax on protecting nature.
We give more than that just to BHP in diesel fuel rebates alone.
That is not just tragically short-sighted, it is a crime against nature and future generations.
Let me use a local example of a place that has been one of the greatest sources of joy, wonder and stillness for me.
The mighty Murrumbidgee River.
During my time playing rugby it was a place for recovery, now it is a refuge of sorts.
For decades it’s had 90-99% of its flows diverted by Snowy Hydro.
While still beautiful, it’s now a river in terminal decline - a shadow of its former glory.
And it flows through a landscape missing almost all of its small mammals due to the impact of cats and foxes.
Over the last two years it has been a new kind of joy seeing our son at the river. He gets so excited about going out there that we can’t tell him where we’re going or he won’t sleep in the car.
But on our current trajectory our kids will experience less biodiversity, less wonder at the exquisite species that live here, than any generation in the history of humans on this continent.
That, to me, is unacceptable.
It’s why in the last parliament I successfully negotiated with the government to deliver additional water releases into the river which needs them so badly and a review into structural changes to deliver long-term reform to restore the health of the Bidgee.
I’ll continue to work with Minister Gallagher to make sure all of our kids and grandkids can enjoy this special river one day.
We have the solutions. We have tens of thousands of years of First Nations knowledge and wisdom, and the best of modern science to help inform land management and deal with invasive species.
If we combine this with the efforts of community groups alongside 1% of the federal budget on nature, and a dedicated fund for invasive species solutions, we can change our trajectory and start showing this place the love and respect it deserves and demonstrate an understanding that we are part of nature and if she goes down, we go down with her.
This should not be a progressive vs conservative issue.
What is more conservative than wanting to conserve your home - the very thing that sustains you? What is more Australian than the plants and animals that have lived here for millions of years?
We can and must do better. And I think Australians want us to.
But we need to overcome vested interests to do it.
Despite overwhelming public support for a fair return on our natural resources and for making multinationals pay their way, I fear the influence of vested interests means we are about to repeat the same mistakes of the resources boom in the data centre gold rush.
So my third and final number is $500 million.
That’s what a modest 5% levy on data centres commencing on 1 January next year would generate by the end of 2030.
It’s a model I‘ve had costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office and am releasing today.
In the context of a forecast $200 billion investment and little to no corporate tax paid by foreign data centre companies in this country, it’s not much - but it’s better than the nothing we’ll get if we don’t put in place something like this now.
And it’s the equivalent of the entire amount we spend annually on new social and affordable housing through the Housing Australia Future Fund. That’s housing for Australians who desperately need it.
Microsoft’s Australian data centre business generated $2.3 billion in local revenue but paid no company tax according to the ATO’s latest tax transparency report.
Most foreign owned data centres will likely never pay company tax.
US tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google pay effective company tax rates of 1% to 4%.
We all pay income tax to fund the services we use and rely on, yet these huge multinationals turn over billions and find ways to pay little to no company tax here.
Most of that profit shifting and tax minimisation isn’t necessarily illegal but it points to a deeply flawed tax system.
We have to get better as a country at capturing long-term benefit and setting the terms of engagement.
It feels like our government is so focussed on what big tech wants that it's forgotten to ask what Australians need.
Our Government seems starstruck by the US AI companies and blind to community sentiment and long-term costs if we get the AI policy settings wrong.
The only question the government seems to be asking is what do we need to do to accommodate data centres and frontier model training here?
But what our communities want to know is what will they do for us? How do data centres benefit us now and over the long term? Where are the protections for communities? Why has all this been left so late?
And as if that’s not enough, we’re also facing the prospect that the rights of Australian authors, musicians, artists, journos and other copyright holders will be sacrificed on the altar of AI frontier training.
It’s a change that - as the head of the Copyright Agency warned - could make us a global data laundering hot spot.
We don’t need to go down this path.
When it comes to AI policy we need to be seeing with clear, very human eyes and remember the value of critical thinking. We may be drowning in information, but now is a time we desperately need human wisdom.
Creatives tell our stories. The stories of who we are, where we came from and who we aspire to be.
They carry our culture.
Why are we considering selling them out?
We have so many other advantages to use as leverage.
This is what I mean by long-term thinking.
Imagine siding with the tech bros over almost every Australian author, artist and journo that wants their copyright protected.
This is about more than copyright.
It's about having the confidence as a country to value what we have, back our own people and businesses, and set the terms when global companies want access to our markets and our resources.
Which brings me to my final story, a short one from a recent hearing of the joint select committee into AI where we heard from local AI company Vault Cloud.
They told the committee, to quote them directly:
“foreign companies think we’re able to provide the best service in the world, but the Australian government thinks it has to go to foreign companies to get the best service in the world.”
How is that possible? Here we are bending over backwards for foreign AI companies while ignoring homegrown options available to us.
And it’s not just on AI, I’ve heard story after story of world-leading Australian companies who have to sell to overseas governments before our government will take them seriously and buy their product or service.
Surely at a moment of so much global uncertainty it’s time for our government to embrace and actively pursue a deeply patriotic procurement policy. To spend Australian taxpayer money for the benefit of Australian businesses, Australian workers and Australians generally.
Because too often I get the sense from people that, as a country, we’ve lost our confidence and don’t back ourselves - that we’re not as proud of our achievements as we should be.
And I see that in the way the government chooses to spend money all the time. Why do we overlook Australian companies and shovel money at foreign ones? Many of whom have very patchy records of delivering on budget and on time, not to mention how little tax they pay
This kind of procurement system leads to far too many local companies being lured, or forced, offshore. We can do better than that as a country.
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So how do we drive change?
How do we build something better?
Australians clearly want something different. And I’m right there with them.
Heading into the next election we have a choice.
We can look backwards, trying to reclaim the things we feel we've lost, or we can work together to build a country that gives Australians those opportunities again.
We can give in to the algorithmic outrage that too often overlooks that we have more in common than what drives us apart.
Or we can decide to build something better.
We can move beyond the major party system.
We can build a democracy where people are elected to put their communities and our long term future first.
Where governments have to listen, negotiate and justify their decisions.
Community independents working together could help make that happen.
In the last parliament, when the government had to negotiate more often and with more people in the senate, we saw better outcomes.
We secured big, important changes to legislation and got the government to commit to new programs that will make a difference in people's lives.
This way is clearly not always easy. Negotiations take time and compromise takes work.
But that's democracy. That’s how it should work.
We are already seeing Australians outgrowing the idea that only the two major parties can govern. That the two party system is the only way to do things.
Australians want a politics where their local representative actually reflects their community’s view - not the position of a party or other vested interest.
We want politicians who are in touch - really in touch - with their communities and the challenges facing Australians.
We want people who have courage and a commitment to the long-term solutions needed to solve them. People like Dr Helen Haines.
I believe a model of smaller, community interest parties and independents working together in an alliance can succeed here and build the kind of future we want.
Building a better balance between regions and cities. Between young and old.
Delivering solutions that actually deal with the root causes of problems and truly Advance Australia Fair.
Leading to less capture and more community driven decisions.
It could give us the courage to stand up to big countries and companies and demand a fair deal.
We have an incredible opportunity to help shape the next chapter of our country.
It's time we took it.
ENDS
ACT Independent Senator David Pocock