Adam Bandt pledges to supersize corporate taxes

Greens leader Adam Bandt will outline plans to raise $514 billion in new “excessive profit” corporate taxes, which he sees as a key party demand if the party holds the balance of power after the next election.

In a major speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Bandt will outline three taxes aimed at big corporations, including the big four banks, Telstra, Woolworths and Coles, Wesfarmers, Ampol and even JB Hi-Fi.

Greens leader Adam Bandt during a doorstop interview in the press gallery, at Parliament House in Canberra.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Bandt will unveil plans for an “excessive profits tax”, a 40 per cent tariff on companies with a turnover of more than $100 million, that could raise $65 billion in the first four years.

The Greens will also reboot the gas and oil company tax they took to the 2022 election, aiming to close loopholes in the existing petroleum resource rent tax that would raise $33 billion over the first four years, according to Parliamentary Budget Office costings.

They would also bring back their plans for a coal and mining tax, a 40 per cent hit on the super profits of mining projects that the Parliamentary Budget Office estimates could earn $27 billion in the first four years of operation.

In the costings prepared for the Greens, the Parliamentary Budget Office warned that “there is a high degree of uncertainty associated with this costing and caution should be taken when interpreting the results”.

Super profits are usually defined as profits above the interest rate investors get for buying government debt and the Greens estimate that over 10 years, the tax take would rise to $514 billion.

Neither Labor nor the Coalition are likely to back the Greens’ tax trio, but the party aiming to hold the balance of power in the parliament believes Australians might be receptive to the scheme during a cost-of-living crisis.

To sweeten the deal for voters, the Greens say much of the revenue would be handed back to voters in the form of cost-of-living measures, such as including dental cover in Medicare.

The most recent Resolve Political Monitor survey conducted for this masthead earlier this month showed Labor had a primary vote of 29 per cent, the Coalition on 37 per cent and the Greens on 13 per cent, with a distinct chance of grabbing a share of the balance of power after the next election.

Bandt said the reforms were designed to make corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of tax and “to make life better for everyone”.

“The last time the country tried to seriously tax the excess profits of the mining industry, these companies poured millions of dollars into advertising, forcing Labor to sack their own democratically elected prime minister,” he will say, according to speech notes.

“That doesn’t mean it was the wrong thing to do, that is exactly why it needs to be done. We can’t have the mining industry determining who is and who isn’t running the country and who the country is run for.”

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