Adam Bandt’s Press Club speech was an insight into what a country run by 17-year-old arts students might look like | David Penberthy

It felt like one toke too many on the policy bong this week when Adam Bandt spruiked the Greens’ tax-the-sh*t-out-of-everything plan, writes David Penberthy.

If you think back to your youth there is every chance that some – if not many – of the views you held are different to the ones you hold today. I was reflecting on that fact while reading up on Greens Leader Adam Bandt and his star turn at the National Press Club where he unveiled his big ticket economic policy for the upcoming election, a hefty $514bn tax on almost every major company that dares make a profit.

It’s a lot of money, $514bn. It could buy you a lot of tofu, a lot of organic sour dough and several pairs of tie-dyed hessian happy pants. I am not sure if that’s what Adam Bandt wants to spend it on, but maybe that’s not the point, as the point seems to be that these companies must be punished for making a profit at all.

Not just the companies that are involved in the alleged killing of the planet, such as the mining and fuel ones, but supermarkets – apparently complicit in the inequitable distribution of food – and even the poor old telcos, whose role in letting us make phone calls and use the internet is deserving of punitive tax attention.

This is what a country would look like if it was run by a 17-year-old student in the first year of his arts degree.

I know because I was one myself. I spent most of my spare time in first year uni selling Sandinista-branded coffee beans to raise money for the socialist revolutionary government of Nicaragua.

Australian Greens Leader addresses the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra., Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Sandinistas were at war with the “contras” at the time, the US-backed counterinsurgents who Ronald Reagan was funding through the CIA to stop the spread of communism in Central America.

Having just spent a year as an exchange student in Mexico, and having until then led a mundane existence in the unspectacular Adelaide suburb of Mitchell Park, throwing in my lot with the Sandinistas seemed like a cool and edgy thing to do.

Lefties would call it selling out. Normal people would call it growing older and growing a brain.

With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, spending a whole year of life selling coffee beans for a tin-pot socialist government in Central America seems an unusual life choice.

It was the late great P.J. O’Rourke who said he stopped being a communist when he realised he would have to give his golf clubs to a family in Zaire.

On the night of the last federal election in May 2022, I was at a 50th birthday party for one of my best mates.

It was a cracking night and as the wine flowed late in the evening conversation turned to the election result, with Albo beating Scomo off the back of a surging Green vote and a clean sweep by the Teals.

Everyone at this party was solidly middle-class – lawyers, medicos, finance sector, media types.

As the drunken conversation unfolded a number of folks sheepishly admitted that for the first time in their lives they had voted for the Greens.

Their thinking was that they couldn’t stand Scott Morrison, chiefly over his perceived climate change denialism, his clunky handling of women’s issues and his hands-in-the-air Hillsong stylings.

Where’s Scott when Adam needs him? Picture: 60 Minutes

They also thought Anthony Albanese had run such a rotten campaign that Labor didn’t deserve a vote, and regarded him as an uninspiring old Labor stager.

The many thousands of first-time Green votes cast that night weren’t so much genuine Green votes as protest votes against the major parties and their leadership candidates. These votes were cast flippantly in seats where (we thought) the Libs had such big margins that a protest vote wouldn’t matter.

The Greens surged in May 2022 because so many middle-class voters had a maturity relapse and tapped into the latent teenage Trotskyist still lurking within.

It might have been a cheap thrill two years ago, but will it work again this time?

It felt like one toke too many on the policy bong this week with Bandt spruiking the Greens’ tax-the-shit-out-of-everything plan.

Even the most unlapsed Trotskyist should be able to tell this is economic policy so juvenile that no vaguely intelligent 17-year-old would serve it up in a first year sociology essay.

It only works if you are trying to turn our society into something else, like a 1930s Catalonian anarcho-syndicalist commune, as opposed to a modern open economy where jobs are created off the back of profits.

The pre-emptively extortionate nature of Bandt’s plan also has a tasteless militancy to it.

This was a conceited threat to Albanese, saying minority government support is contingent on the acceptance of this hulking great tax on everything.

It suggests cockiness on Bandt’s part, positioning himself as kingmaker before a single vote has been cast.

But then there’s the other middle-class concerns around the Greens.

Forget the vibes about the ukulele-playing Scomo or poor old Albo trying to remember the RBA cash rate and unemployment rate.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a toast at the Cauliflower Club rugby lunch on Friday honouring former Wallabies captain Michael Hooper. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

Even before this week’s crazy tax foray, more affluent Australians have seen more of what the Greens are really on about in the past two years.

The idea that all forms of investment property ownership (not to mention private health and education) are a form of theft is anathema to every member of the Australian middle-class.

The Aussie bourgeoisie might have found themselves possessed last time, like the stranded dinner party guests in Luis Bunuel’s political satire The Exterminating Angel, unable to leave their host’s home when the hired help all mysteriously leave.

I doubt they will find themselves possessed in as great a number again, especially if the company they work for has made the Bandt blacklist, and their Airbnb beach house identified as an insult to renters everywhere.

It might have been fun once, but you can take the keys to our shacks from our cold, dying hands.

Originally published as Adam Bandt’s Press Club speech was an insight into what a country run by 17-year-old arts students might look like | David Penberthy