Greens MP wants a ‘billionaires tax’ to raise money for better pensions

Thought Greens Senator Richard Di Natale’s universal basic income idea was pretty radical? He’s got nothing on New South Wales Greens MP David Shoebridge, who has released a manifesto of policies so hard-left that his party’s national leader looks pretty tame by comparison.

That said, there’s at least one that may appeal to Age Pension recipients – a tax on the super-rich that could be used to increase benefits payments.

According to Shoebridge, a 5 per cent or 10 per cent annual tax on every Australian billionaires’ accumulated wealth would raise anywhere from $5.5 billion to $11 billion each year, based on the estimation that Aussie billionaires have a combined wealth of $111 billion. Although the MP particularly specifies that the money raised could be spent on education, affordable childcare, housing and clean energy, he does also make mention of pensioners.

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“Older Australians are going without food and heating because the cost of living is too high for their pensions,” he says in the manifesto. “Meanwhile, billionaires are getting handouts from the government with tax concessions, cut price sale of public assets, toll road concessions, favourable planning decisions and fossil fuel other tax rebates.”

Shoebridge also proposes:

• non-specific stronger support for “Aboriginal justice”
• the renationalisation of the energy grid
• free and universal public transport
• free higher education
• domestic violence leave for wom*n
• decriminalising abortion across Australia
• universal childcare and housing
• an end to public funding of private schools 
• the abolition of tax breaks for churches 
• shorter and more flexible working hours for employees
• long-service leave for all working Aussies every 10 years
• non-specific removal of “corporates control” from food production
• a levy on empty homes
• lowering the voting age to 16
• a new ‘public’ bank that breaks the ‘Big Four’ monopoly

“Good steady jobs are disappearing and we have the lowest wage growth in decades,” the MP writes of today’s workers. “At the same time corporate profits are surging to thirty-year highs. The share of wages compared to profits has fallen to the lowest level since 1959.” A cap on CEO salaries, also proposed in the manifesto, could go some way to righting this balance, however.

As for wom*n’s rights (no, that’s not a typo – the * takes the ‘man’ out of the word and is sometimes used by particularly fierce feminists as a personal pronoun), the manifesto says that making maternity leave gender neutral is also essential.

“Renters should be able to stay in their rental properties for as long as they like if they follow the rules and pay their rent,” Shoebridge says of housing, calling it a human right.

There should also be drug law reform that involves ending the use of drug-detecting dogs. 

“The dogs get it wrong up to 80% of the time but police use them as a pretense [sic] to conduct humiliating strip searches,” Shoebridge claims. He also would like the government to explore ways to regulate the production of the ecstasy and other “relatively safe” drugs.

The Australian was somewhat critical of the policies outlined in the manifesto, saying that the document was likely to expose the party to ridicule in the lead-up to the next federal and NSW elections.

But Shoebridge insinuated on social media that that was likely to be because News Corp shareholder Rupert Murdoch would not be keen to be subjected to the billionaires tax. Given that Murdoch is a US resident rather than an Australian resident, and the ownership of News Corp Australia is complicated by the existence of shareholders, its unclear how the Greens would apply the levy to Murdoch’s personal wealth, however.

Some Facebook commenters on Shoebridge’s page were sceptical of the workability of a billionaires tax, with one user called Stephen Carter questioning the likelihood of the super-rich quickly transferring their investment capital offshore. “Hoe [sic] to export all Australias wealth in one quick easy lesson,” Carpenter commented. “Do yo really think they are going to hang around for this ? dream on Dopey.”

What do you think about Richard Shoebridge’s manifesto for the NSW Greens? Would you vote for him if he could introduce these reforms? 

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