2025-10-21
By Penny Allman-Payne
Senator for Queensland
As I write this, my team and I are trying to pressure Labor to release desperately needed home care packages so hundreds of thousands of older Australians can get the care they need.
It’s a great example of the importance of the Greens at this moment in Australian history. Labor, despite a massive parliamentary majority, repeatedly demonstrates its timidity in the face of massive challenges, and it’s up to the Greens to hold them to account and force them to take action – even when their big-money donors don’t want them to.
When I look back on the past year there are obviously some things I wish would have gone differently. Losing three wonderful Party Room colleagues at the election was a real blow. Working with Adam, Stephen and Max was a privilege and their loss is still being felt in the Party Room and across the movement.
But the thing that stands out the most to me isn’t the result of the election, but the way we fought it. While Labor and the Coalition bickered over minutiae, we campaigned on a big, bold social democratic vision of an Australia where the billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share, and everyone enjoys a good life, supported by great public services and infrastructure.
I’m immensely proud of our campaign and of all the hard work our candidates, campaign teams and volunteers put in. Thanks to all of you.
Primary & Secondary Education
While school communities were disappointed with Labor’s new funding deal, which will keep public schools underfunded for another decade, the Greens did score a win with the removal of the dodgy loophole that allowed the states to withhold millions of dollars from their contributions.
This term we’re going to be really focused on educational inequity and issues of inclusivity in the school system. Central to that work will be shifting the conversation on schools away from the neoliberal obsession with testing and standardisation. We desperately need to reimagine schools as places that foster imagination, creative thinking, connection and personal growth – not factories that churn out future workers.
I’m proud that we’ve managed to establish the Greens as the party of public education and the most powerful voice for educational equity in federal politics.
Social Services and Government Services
Calling Australia’s welfare system a “social safety net” is a laughable misnomer. There is nothing supportive about a system that provides people with poverty payments and then - through malice and incompetence - suspends, reduces or terminates those payments, often at the behest of profiteering job service providers.
Needless to say there is a lot of work to be done in these portfolios, including tackling dodgy debt recovery practices and automation, the punitive targeted compliance framework and mutual obligations regime, and the egregious inadequacy of income support payments that remain among the lowest in the OECD.
We did score a win recently with Labor caving to pressure to forgive 1.2 million debts calculated using illegal income apportionment, but we’re a long way from having a social security system that lifts us all up. I believe fighting for this needs to be core Greens business.
Older People
When Labor and the Coalition did their dirty deal on aged care reforms last year the Greens were very clear that we thought the new laws were written with the bottom lines of providers in mind, and that older people would be worse off. We were right.
With the new laws set to take effect on November 1, there is increasing anxiety about the rationing of care, rising out-of-pocket costs and the downstream effects this is going to have on the broader health system.
Right now we’re pushing to get more home care packages released into the system so older Australians can get the support they need in their homes, but I expect the outrage about these changes is going to get louder as the full implications become clear.
In Gladstone and Queensland
While the federal election has dominated the last 12 months my electorate office team has been continuing to support and advocate for constituents and build relationships in Gladstone and across the state. Our community pantry is used more heavily than ever – a sign of just how dire economic conditions are – while our community dinners also remain incredibly popular.
Central Queensland might not yet be a hotbed of Greens politics, but there is no doubt that our economic justice messaging resonates very strongly here, and the huge growth of the local branch is proof of a latent demand for something beyond politics as usual.
It’s clear that the Albanese Government has no appetite – or ability – to embark on the kinds of transformational reforms that could make a real difference in people’s lives. Electorally, they’ve been rewarded for their small-target strategy, and the lesson they will inevitably learn from that is that Australians want a government that does nothing to fundamentally change things.
We know this is not true. Our job over the next year is to remind people that they can, and should, expect better.
In solidarity and with kindness,
- Penny