Adam Bandt rebrands tax plans as 'Robin Hood' reforms
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The news: Greens leader Adam Bandt will rebrand his tax plan, including a return to Kevin Rudd’s abandoned mining tax, as "Robin Hood" reforms before the next election.
The context: Bandt will address the National Press Club on Wednesday, and will unveil the Greens’ "Big Corporations Tax package" which he will frame as a response to "excessive profits across the economy".
The package will include a 40% tax on coal and mining based on Rudd’s original Resource Super Profit Tax, reforms to "close loopholes", the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT), and a 40% tax on "excessive profits" made by companies with turnovers exceeding $100 million.
Leaning on new costings, Bandt will estimate the revenue generated by the changes at $514 billion over the next decade. All three policies are already on the Greens website but show revenue estimates of $430 billion.
In 2008, then-prime minister Rudd attempted to implement a 40% levy on mining corporations "super profits" before watering that down to 30%.
Julia Gillard scrapped the plan when she rolled Rudd in 2010, replacing it with the Minerals Resource Rent Tax. Gillard’s move came after a severe backlash from the resources sector, which spent $22 million on advertising in the six weeks leading up to Rudd’s demise, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.
The original 40% tax was recommended in the Henry Tax Review, published in 2010.
The Greens estimate the excessive profits tax will rake in $296 billion over the next decade, the mining tax $107 billion, and the PRRT reforms $111 billion.
What they 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," Bandt will say.
"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."
The source: Adam Bandt draft speech to NPC
