Economy-wrecking protest party

When it comes to political opportunism and economic illiteracy, the Greens are always consistent. An excellent example of both is the party’s new proposal to give parents $800 a child for school supplies and out-of-pocket fees. “Parents are forking out thousands,” Greens leader Adam Bandt tells The Australian’s Rhiannon Down. It is a snip at a mere $10bn for starters, as costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, and one of a grab-bag of giveaways the Greens will want funded if Labor needs their support to form a government after the next election.

Other calls for cash include adding dental treatment to Medicare (the PBO costs that at $45bn for the starting years) and abolishing the $60bn still owing in student debt after Labor stole the Greens’ policy and cut it by $20bn last year.

The Greens’ plan to pay for all the extra expenditure is succinctly explained by Treasury spokesman Nick McKim: “Make big corporations pay their fair share of tax.” The party proposes doing that with a 40 per cent “excess profit tax” kicking in above $100m in turnover. The PBO estimates it would raise $65bn across the forward estimates. So that’s that – people who care about their fellow Australians should vote Greens knowing the party has a plan too good for Labor to turn down.

Except it is too good to be true. The PBO’s understated analysis of the tax plan states it “is very sensitive to international and domestic economic conditions” and that companies could respond by “changing their level of equity or debt and altering business structures”. In other words, international business would restructure operations to reduce tax in Australia when they did not up stakes and move to countries where the income they created and jobs they generated were welcome – Australia’s statutory company tax rate is 30 per cent, way higher than the OECD member average.

And if taxing big business out of Australia is not enough, Mr Bandt wants a Labor government that needs the Greens to “wind back handouts for wealthy property investors”. That means the people whose savings are sunk in the mortgage on a flat will pay for the nation’s rental stock. In the Greens’ fantasy of political power without responsibility it would not be their problem when the company tax base eroded and rents rocketed for lack of supply.

On their economic record the Greens are neither fit to govern nor to exercise policy power from the crossbench. To ensure this never happens, Labor and the Coalition should rule out accepting Mr Bandt and his colleagues’ support in the next parliament. The Greens are wreckers, not governors.