Key events
Greens leader to announce ‘Robin Hood reform’ package
Paul Karp
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, has announced the party will take a “package of Robin Hood reforms” to the next election.
The first plank of the policy is a 40% tax on “excessive profits” of big businesses, coal and mining companies, and closing loopholes in the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT).
Bandt will unveil the policy at the National Press Club today along with some of the spending measures to be paid for by the new tax, which is similar to the super profits tax proposed before the last election.
The Greens have released Parliamentary Budget Office costings that suggests these three related reforms can raise $514bn over a decade by:
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Applying a 40% tax on profits earned on turnover after the first $100m, which would hit the big four banks, Coles and Woolworths, Wesfarmers, Telstra, JB Hi-Fi and Ampol. This is projected to raise $296bn over a decade.
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Changes to the PRRT to reduce expenditure eligible for deductions; adding a 10% royalty on offshore projects; and including four exempt projects into the PRRT. Projected to raise $111bn.
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A 40% tax on the super profits of mining projects, excluding some new industries such as lithium or nickel mining. ($107bn)
In excerpts of Bandt’s speech, seen by Guardian Australia, the Greens leader said:
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. 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. If Labor hadn’t capitulated so spectacularly, the country would have had an extra $35 billion in revenue between 2012 to 2020. This money could have built homes, fixed teeth or kept people out of poverty…
Big corporations across the economy have squeezed hundreds of billions of dollars out of the public since the end of the pandemic – too much of it tax free. Because just one of the things we could do through a Robin Hood style big corporations tax is to put dental into Medicare, for everybody, because your teeth should be included as basic healthcare.
PM to meet Pacific Island leaders today
Daniel Hurst
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will meet Pacific leaders in Tonga today, with plans for a regional police training centre in Brisbane expected to be high on the agenda.
The Pacific Islands Forum is the region’s most important annual political gathering. The meeting is happening at a time of increased concern about the climate crisis and intensifying geopolitical rivalries (chiefly between China and the US).
When he landed in Tonga last night, Albanese said:
We’re part of the Pacific family and over the next couple of days we’ll be talking about our common interests, how we work together to combat climate change [and] for economic development and for peace and security in our region.
The meeting is expected to discuss plans for a Pacific policing initiative, including a centre in Brisbane to help train officers from across the region.
The Australian minister for the Pacific, Pat Conroy, is also attending the event and has sought to emphasise that the proposal is “firmly Pacific-led”.
Conroy said he “would reject any accusation, any claim that this is something that Australia is driving”. He said Pacific countries had previously expressed a view that any gaps in security in the region be filled from within the Pacific.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our rolling news coverage. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be bringing you the best of the overnight and breaking news before Emily Wind assumes the controls.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, will today give a speech at the National Press Club in which he has promised to announce a “package of Robin Hood reforms” to take to the next election. The first plank of the policy is a 40% tax on “excessive profits” of big businesses, coal and mining companies and closing loopholes in the petroleum resource rent tax. It comes as the Greens threw their support behind the CFMEU construction union in its fight against legislative administration. More on both these lines coming up.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is in Tonga today for the Pacific Islands Summit and is expected to announce a trailblazing treaty – the Falepili Union – with Tuvalu. Albanese and the Tuvalu prime minister, Feleti Teo, will hold a press conference later today to mark the occasion. More coming up.
Crossbench MPs have heaped scorn on the Albanese government after its decision to exclude topics on gender, sexual orientation and variations of sex characteristics in the next census. They are seeking an urgent explanation from the government about why it dumped new topics on sexuality and gender diversity from the next census – a decision that left the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras “deeply concerned and disappointed”.
