Former Queensland Senate and Senate candidate Campbell Newman says Australia is lost and must return to the nation-building policies of the last century.
“I do not recognize Australia … because this country has lost its mood,” Mr Newman told ABC. Questions and answers on Thursday.
Responding to Green Senator Larissa Waters, who called for increased taxes on billionaires to fund basic services, Mr Campbell said a solution should be sought in the last century.
“I grew up as a teenager in a country that believed in national development,” said Mr Newman, who is running for the Liberal Democrats.
“This generation of World War II built this country, built a system of highways, aluminum refineries, coal-fired power plants, dams and irrigation schemes, and there was an opportunity.”
He called for tax cuts, lower spending and a voluntary pension to boost business activity.
Senator Waters has taken the opposite approach, repeating her party’s policy of free TAFE and the university and dental care included in Medicare.
“Everything is growing except salaries. Do you know what else has risen? The wealth of billionaires during Covid – particularly the billionaires involved in mining – has doubled their wealth. So, we actually have a growing gap between very rich and ordinary people, and this government is not doing anything to fix it, ”she said.
“We may have a government that works for you, not just for big corporations and political donors, if we force billionaires and big corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. We can increase income and then fund the services people need to solve this cost of living. ”
Later in the program, the couple faced the challenge of climate change, and Mr. Newman pressed Senator Waters to see if she would support specific new infrastructure projects.
“Will you support flood mitigation dams to protect Brisbane and Ipswich because the Greens have a track record of confronting dams and such infrastructure because there are always species that are endangered,” Mr Newman asked.
Ms. Waters said her party would consider measures to eliminate the effects of the floods, but there were no “decent” proposals.
