Tonight’s Budget is a pre-election sweetener that fails to make billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share of tax, while growing inequality and fast-tracking climate collapse.

While on the surface the budget may appear to do away with the Liberals’ years of austerity politics, it continues the myth that largesse to the super-wealthy will trickle down to everyday people.

Greens leader Adam Bandt will announce the next steps in the Greens campaign to make the billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share today, with a Budget push for the Morrison government to force the billionaires and big corporations who profited from JobKeeper to pay it back.

In the wake of detail-free indication from the Treasurer that he is embracing continued stimulus, the Greens have expressed concern that Josh Frydenberg doesn’t know the difference between job-creating economic stimulus and corporate welfare.

The Greens will today announce key election policies, including a ‘billionaires tax’ to help fund genuinely free public schools, dental into Medicare and a job for everyone who wants one. 

With the party considering an election in November of this year still a possibility and a minority parliament the most likely outcome, Mr Bandt will push for a tax on billionaires & corporate super profits as part of dealings with a future shared power government.

If the Resource Super Profits Tax had not been watered down and then repealed, it would have raised $34.6 billion dollars, enough to give free dental care to every Australian by including dental in Medicare. 
 
A new costing by the Parliamentary Budget Office, provided to the Greens, shows that the decision to give in to the big mining corporations and billionaires by axing the original “mining tax” has cost the Australian budget $34.6 billion, and bringing a super profits tax back would raise $12.7 billion in the first year. 
 

Everyone is assuming 2021 will be an election year and the Greens are no different. Working closely with the party, our team is raring and ready to go. Your work on policy in previous conferences and again this weekend is making a great contribution to getting the party fit for a campaign. 

The government’s delay or abandonment of most of the recommendations from the Banking Royal Commission is a commitment to the hands off approach that caused the problems in the first place, the Greens say.

“The Liberals had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this Royal Commission, and they have never accepted that there is serious criminality and bad behaviour within the sector,” Greens Economic Justice spokesperson Senator Nick McKim said.