2026-10-29
By Nick McKim
Senator for Tasmania
It’s been a year of winning real change, taking on corporate power and standing up for people, forests and human rights.
From bringing house prices down to ending native forestry’s decades-long exemption from federal environment law, this was a year that showed what Greens can achieve. In the portfolios of Economic Justice, Forests and LGBTIQA+, we fought the one per cent, defended nature, stood with communities under attack and won changes that would not have happened without us.
Economic Justice
This year we put the housing crisis at the centre of the national economic debate. We set out to pop the housing bubble and we succeeded.
For many years we’ve watched the cost of houses and apartments soar, and the dream of home ownership evaporate for millions of people.
This year we drove change, and prices are finally coming down. Our Senate inquiry into the capital gains tax discount put the obscene tax breaks on property investment squarely on the agenda, and forced Labor to rein them in.
For the first time in a generation wages have a chance to catch up to home prices, something that would not have happened without Greens in parliament.
Labor’s package fell well short of what the housing crisis demanded, and protected $33 billion a year in handouts for existing property investors. But despite this we forced extra changes to prevent the use of self-managed superannuation funds to borrow for investment properties, taking further demand out of the housing market. We also secured the removal of sweeping ministerial powers that could have been used to wind the reforms back.
It was a step forward after years of denial, and we will keep fighting until income from wealth is taxed at least as fairly as income from work.
We also took our fight against price gouging back into Parliament. We reintroduced bills to make excessive pricing illegal across the economy and give the ACCC divestiture powers to break up corporations that abuse their market power.
Coles’ fake discounts, the banks’ obscene profits and the Reserve Bank’s own research on corporate pricing all reinforced the point: corporations used the cost-of-living crisis as cover to push up prices and profits.
When the RBA pushed up interest rates, we stood with renters and mortgage holders being punished for an inflation crisis they did not cause. We exposed the growing cost of negative gearing, challenged fossil fuel subsidies, backed a higher tax on very large superannuation balances and kept making the case for a levy on gas exports.
Forests
After decades of campaigning by forest defenders, this year we ended the native forest logging industry’s exemption from federal environment laws.
For too long, native forest logging has enjoyed a special legal carve-out that allowed threatened species habitat to be destroyed with impunity. That exemption will end after an 18-month transition.
The laws remain far weaker than the climate and extinction crises demand, but Greens pressure turned a corporate wish list into something better than the status quo. Forest campaigners now have extra tools in the fight to keep trees standing.
From fighting a toxic tailings dam in Takayna/Tarkine, to calling out a $53 million to Cement Australia to help them burn native forest biomass, we kept the pressure on governments that use public money to subsidise native forest destruction.
In exciting news Australia’s environment movement has united in a long-overdue campaign to end native forest logging and give Australia’s remnant forests the protection they deserve. The Greens are strongly aligned with the campaign goals and will work with the movement until native forest logging ends across the country. See you in the streets and on the blockades!
LGBTIQA+
This was my first full year as the Greens’ LGBTIQA+ spokesperson, and it’s been a privilege to carry forward the work of generations of activists who made every advance in queer rights possible.
Sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics have been protected under federal anti-discrimination law since 2013, but they remain the only protected attributes without a dedicated commissioner. That double standard has gone on for long enough, and we’ve introduced legislation to establish a dedicated LGBTIQA+ Human Rights Commissioner. .
The bill would give LGBTIQA+ communities a permanent national advocate within the Australian Human Rights Commission, appointed through a transparent and merit-based process with genuine community involvement.
It would also update federal language on innate variations of sex characteristics in line with the Darlington Statement and reforms already made in Tasmania and other jurisdictions.
This year we repeatedly fought for trans and gender-diverse people as conservative governments and far-right campaigners tried to turn their very existence into a political weapon. We also condemned Queensland’s cruel ban on gender-affirming care for young people and opposed the Northern Territory Government putting trans women in men’s prisons.
These culture wars have real and dire consequences for people.
We will keep fighting discrimination in religious schools and institutions, defending access to health care and making sure LGBTIQA+ people can live with safety, dignity and joy. Queer rights are human rights!
Lutruwita/Tasmania
The year began with another strong result at the July state election. We’ve now grown our Tasmanian vote in the last two state elections and the last two federal elections, so momentum is with us. All five of our Lower House MPs were returned after a people-powered campaign, giving us a strong team to fight the Liberals’ stadium obsession, defend forests and waterways, and push for housing and cost-of-living relief.
At the federal level we continued to force Tasmanian issues onto the national agenda. We highlighted the National Climate Risk Assessment’s finding that Tasmania is the state most exposed to climate hazards. We challenged the corporate structures and tax arrangements of the multinational salmon farming industry, and worked with communities fighting the damage industrial fish farming is doing to our coastlines and marine life.
We advocated for Tasmanian humanitarian and master mariner Madeleine Habib after she was seized by the Israeli military in international waters while trying to deliver medical aid to Gaza. We demanded that the Australian Government secure her release, and backed the community campaign that helped bring her safely home. Madeleine’s courage gave heart to people across Tasmania and sent a powerful message that genocide must be resisted, not enabled.
None of this work happens without people who volunteer, organise, donate, write submissions, turn up to rallies and blockades, and refuse to accept that politics must always serve the powerful.
A huge thank you to everyone who has worked alongside us this year.
Go Greens!
- Nick