Beyond his growing Melbourne base, Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt has never inspired the same passion as the sainted Bob Brown, but his appearance at the National Press Club last week showed that unlike many modern politicians, he hasn’t given up on the vision thing.
In a wide-ranging speech which covered issues including housing, climate action, health care, tax reform, logging, childcare, education and defence, Bandt presented a fiery, coherent argument for doing things differently in Australia.
Once a member of the Labor Party, Adam Bandt left when Bob Hawke introduced HECS in 1989. He became an industrial and public interest lawyer before entering politics in 2010, turning his inner Melbourne electorate into one of the safest in the country. Injustice and inequity remain at the core of his political pitch.
He says Australian governments have broken the promise of handing future generations a better life than what came before. As he put it, ‘in a wealthy country like ours, everyone should be able to afford the basics.’
Adam Bandt has been lugging a giant toothbrush around the country to promote the Greens policy of bringing dental into Medicare, a common sense idea for anyone who regards teeth as part of the human body. He’s also arguing for universal access to mental health care, which in any sane society would be a no-brainer, and high quality childcare for all.
Bandt proposes to pay for these things by properly taxing large corporations and the ultra-wealthy, reminding Australians that nurses currently pay more tax than mega-companies like ExxonMobil and Woodside Energy.
He says the major parties have failed to protect ordinary Australians from the cost of living and climate crises, with Peter Dutton’s Coalition threatening to repeat the Trump catastrophe locally, and Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party doing little more than tinkering around the edges of the status quo.
Minority government?
The Greens leader believes his party is within reach of winning new seats in places like Wills, Macnamara, Richmond, Sturt and Perth. This would make minority government a real possibility, and force the next government to negotiate with the crossbench, regardless of loud public statements to the contrary.
In Mr Bandt’s words, ‘You don’t have to choose between the timid and the terrible in this battle of the band-aids, you can vote for a future for all of us.’
In response to the suggestion that the Greens had been unable to accomplish anything of substance in the past, he said, ‘the last time we were in minority government, we got dental into Medicare for kids, and some of the world’s strongest climate laws.’
As for the most recent pariamentary term, Bandt claims credit for forcing Labor to provide three and a half billion extra dollars for public and community housing, ensuring better water flows to the Murray and winning the right to electronically disconnect for workers when not at work. He also said Labor had belatedly supported Greens proposals such as making supermarket price gouging illegal and tripling the bulk billing incentive for GPs.
Regarding the climate emergency, Adam Bandt continues to hammer the common sense proposition that eludes the major parties as they accept donations and lobbying from fossil fuel interests: ‘You can’t put the fire out while you’re pouring petrol on it.’
Money corrupts
The Greens leader spoke about the corrosive influence of big money on politics, noting that the extreme wealth of billionaires distorts and damages the global economy’s effects on ordinary people. ‘We can see it playing out in America right now, with the billionaires standing over the president as he creates laws which benefit them and are a danger to us all.
‘We must stop Peter Dutton bringing Trumpian politics to Australia, just as we must stop Anthony Albanese bringing Trump himself here.’
Bandt didn’t spare local billionaires either, saying: ‘In the time that it takes me to give this speech, Trump fan, Liberal Party donor and climate change denier Gine Rinehart will have made more money than many working people in this country make in an entire year.’
Under the Greens’ tax plan, the wealthiest 150 billionaires would pay an annual ten per cent tax on their entire wealth, and there would be a ten per cent limit on capital flight within a year to prevent them moving capital off shore. (These measures alone are estimated to raise $50 billion over the next decade.)
In addition, the Greens’ plan includes a 40 per cent excess profit tax on corporations with more than $100 million in turnover in this country. Mr Bandt noted that super profit taxes are commonplace in Europe, with the Parliamentary Budget Office suggesting that such a tax would raise $514 billion over the next decade in Australia.
He spoke about the Greens’ cost of living plan, the need to end native forest logging, and the ‘disgrace’ of the prime minister scrapping his own environment laws ‘because the coal and gas corporations told him to’.
Echidna defence
Regarding defence and AUKUS, Mr Bandt said it was no longer appropriate for Australia to be ‘joined at the hip to a dangerous demagogue in the United States’, but should instead have its own independent defence policy.
Internationally, he argued that ‘Australia should be a force for peace’, with a focus on de-escalating tensions. Mr Bandt suggested that we look for common ground and new alliances with other countries under attack from Donald Trump’s tariffs, because ‘that’s what you should do with bullies like that – work with others and isolate him.’
As for the prospect of working with Anthony Albanese, Mr Bandt said elected representatives would simply have to talk to each other in the case of a minority parliament, regardless of the long-running rancour between the ALP and Greens.
‘It would be astounding if after the election – with a diversity of voices in parliament – the prime minister or anyone else then said, “Oh no, I’m not going to respect the result…” ‘There will have to be people talking to each other. It’s what people expect.’
Adam Bandt’s complete speech can be viewed on YouTube here.
The federal election will be held on Saturday, 3 May.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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