Vikki Campion: Greens put Australia at risk if they slash defence spending

If the Greens slash defence spending, how will they pay for their free uni, childcare, parental leave, and welfare utopia — and protect our nation at the same time, Vikki Campion asks.

Last week in the gardens of Parliament House, Greens leader Adam Bandt took a cocky video welcoming a Labor Government “where the Greens hold the balance of power”. For once, he’s not wrong.

As Labor gets suddenly coy about what they stand for, the voting public is being sold romanticised mission statements over the devil in detail, barrelling into an election that will leave Australia incapable of defending itself and economically anaemic.

The Greens stand to gain a host of new colleagues from the so-called Independent Voices Of candidates, who, if their electioneering rhetoric matches their vote, will back net-zero Green utopia.

Where Mr Bandt is wrong, is it is not the billionaires’ tax that will fund the Greens’ welfare spree, but slashing defence spending by $191.7 billion to 2032 by “buying fewer guns and tanks”, creating a “Global Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution”, which would be more at home on vegan commune than in Defence, that promises “peace and conflict resolution around the world”.

Tellingly, the pointy end of their defence policy, called the “peace, disarmament and demilitarisation” strategy is not about defending Australia’s sovereignty at all but calls for urgent decarbonisation of defence capabilities, operations and activities, which it says is “the biggest sources of carbon emissions in the public service” to “help mitigate … climate change”.

Greens leader Adam Bandt. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

The number one concern of the Greens holding the balance of power should be their world peace strategy, which ends the US alliance, slashes military spending from 2.2 to 1.5 per cent of GDP, and takes money out of defence to develop a “climate security paper” while spending $10 million “to promote peace and non-violent conflict resolution”.

You cannot slash defence spending and abandon the US Alliance while we have China setting up military bases within spitting distance, which they would know if they had read a history book.

They will wipe billions from our bottom line by crushing our defence exports and restricting what we sell, including legislation prohibiting us from exporting weapons, coal, gas or fossil fuels. Our defence exports are not all pointy stuff that goes bang — it’s radars, decoy missiles, bulletproof jackets, laser equipment, and other technology smarts that bring billions into the economy.

If the Greens wipe nearly $350 billion in GDP by resources and energy exports, how will they pay for their free university, TAFE, childcare, parental leave, paid coal miner retirements and welfare utopia?

Labor may be indulging in mission statements rather than detailed policy statements but their junior coalition partner is bolder, sending their policies into the Parliamentary Budget Office to be costed.

According to PBO, the Greens’ plan to tax corporations only adds half a billion dollars to the budget in 2023-24 while a mining super profits tax will have a net revenue of $26.9 billion and the billionaires tax would increase the fiscal balance by $11.26 billion.

This is assuming that billionaires and their accountants won’t exploit valuation challenges in complex structures such as trusts and partnerships, hide assets in offshore accounts, gift assets to non-immediate family members, or simply move overseas.

The PBO determined “a very high degree of uncertainty” in the billionaire’s tax because of the obvious oversight that they will simply pack their bags and leave Australia.

Even if the super-wealthy remained here and committed to pay enormous taxes, even then, the Greens balance sheet cannot pay for the promises it has already made, including $19 billion to pay 50 per cent of coal worker’s wages for a decade, (provided as a wage subsidy to employers who provide an equivalent paying job), wiping an estimated $58 billion that Australian students owe in unpaid loans, $19 billion in free childcare, $24.5 billion for a 26-week paid parental leave package and the $40 billion to convert the Snowy Hydro scheme to renewables.

Tellingly, what remains uncosted is the welfare plan to subsidise “all young people 18 and over $1300 per fortnight whether they are studying or looking for work”, along with the plan for free education, which for just 465,000 free TAFE spots and 20,000 university spots places Labor costs at $1.1 billion.

Then there is $1 billion to tell Australian stories, $6.06 billion for a First Nations Elders Gold Card and indigenous “healing spaces”, $12 billion to “end violence” against women and children, $5 billion for “green” school halls, $7 billion for “green” public housing and $1 billion for a nationwide “compostable processing” scheme — undoubtedly the most expensive compost the world has ever seen.

These alone, and by no means is this list extensive as not all of their policies have costings attached, sits at $268 billion.

This figure doesn’t include vanity projects such as $40 million over a decade to force the public sector and businesses employing more than 50 staff to publicly report “workplace gender” statistics.

If you have $40 billion coming in and a $270 billion shopping list, you cannot erase our profit-making industries because there will be no way to pay the debt back.

Idealistic plans of love and peace are a stark contrast to the reality of the global tensions, where we have military superpowers in conflict and preparing for more.

This is looking at policy through rose-coloured glasses instead of a microscope that leaves the nation poorer and exposed, led by an army of idealists and climate zealots, naively marching Australia to its knees.

Unfortunately for Australians the Labor small target strategy means this is the only platform in the Labor Green alliance we have to view.