The Australian Greens have used their Budget in Reply speech to announce a new tax on extreme profiteering by billionaires during the pandemic.  
The new tax, which only applies to the 122 richest Australians, will raise $29 billion. It will be taxed on the amount their wealth increased between March 2020 and March 2021.

Tonight’s Budget is a pre-election sweetener that fails to make billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share of tax, while growing inequality and fast-tracking climate collapse.

While on the surface the budget may appear to do away with the Liberals’ years of austerity politics, it continues the myth that largesse to the super-wealthy will trickle down to everyday people.

Greens Leader, Adam Bandt, has called out the increasing greenwashing of the government’s gas agenda.

The Greens have emphasised since the proclamation of the ‘gas-led recovery’ that gas is as dirty as coal and that plans such as building new gas plants would lock-in climate failure.

“Morrison’s so-called ‘gas-led recovery’ is a shameful exercise in corporate welfare for yesterday’s technology. 

“Adding as little as 5% hydrogen, which is the target for Energy Australia’s mooted ‘hybrid’ plant, is a comb-over for generators of dangerous greenhouse gas emissions.

The Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt, has announced the Greens will move in the Senate next week for the Government to revoke its direction under the Biosecurity Act to ban and put in place criminal penalties on Australians and residents returning home from India.

“The ban is racist, it’s possibly illegal, it’s not based on health advice and it must be rescinded immediately.  The Greens will move in the Senate next week to overturn the ban and we believe it will have widespread support amongst Senators.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt will announce the next steps in the Greens campaign to make the billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share today, with a Budget push for the Morrison government to force the billionaires and big corporations who profited from JobKeeper to pay it back.

In the wake of detail-free indication from the Treasurer that he is embracing continued stimulus, the Greens have expressed concern that Josh Frydenberg doesn’t know the difference between job-creating economic stimulus and corporate welfare.

The Greens say an investigation is needed into the offsets for the Western Sydney Airport, after revelations that consortiums including advisors to the NSW government made millions from the development. 

An investigation by Lisa Cox at The Guardian revealed that over a quarter of all offsets sold in the NSW scheme were collected by the consortiums. 

Quotes attributable to Greens Leader, Adam Bandt:

Latest power price reports, showing again how renewables are driving down wholesale prices across the National Electricity Market after wholesale prices doubled following the Liberals’ repeal of the carbon price, should encourage the government to drive the transition faster and not prop up coal and gas, Greens Leader Adam Bandt said today.

Greens Leader, Adam Bandt, has described Prime Minister Scott Morrison as an utter embarrassment and a threat to Australia’s safety after Australia’s weak climate action stood in contrast to a host of nations, including our biggest trading partners, lifting their 2030 targets at President Biden’s Climate Summit.

“We are heading towards a climate cliff and as Joe Biden desperately tries to stop us going over the edge, Scott Morrison refuses to lift 2030 targets and Labor backs him in,” said Mr Bandt.