By Sean Healey
Greens (WA) Senators Dee Margetts and Christabel Chamarette released their submission on the 1994-95 federal budget on March 22.
In their initial response to the government's Draft Fiscal Framework, the WA Greens said that the 1994-95 budget would be "more of the same and less to look forward to".
Margetts stated, "The government's ... great justification of the pain without gain is deficit reduction, yet the government has put another massive tax cut in the pipeline, making a mockery of that goal. The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of cuts to public service and handouts to the rich."
Chamarette said that government policy hitherto has had the effect of allowing "the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer". The aim of the Greens' budget submission was to offer indications of alternatives for priorities and action. The submission was not an "alternative budget" with fully worked out projections.
While it accepts the government's medium-term deficit reduction target, the Greens' submission challenges some of the fundamental "items of faith" of government economic policy. In particular the "growth-at-any-costs" mentality is criticised as inflicting "enormous social and environmental costs".
In its conclusion the submission states: "... the practical implication of this [government] policy bias is a preference for private economic activity over public or community activity. Worthwhile social programs are perceived to offer little obvious economic return and so receive reduced resources ... Equity considerations are subordinated to the quest for 'efficiency' and 'international competitiveness'."
They list the push to enterprise bargaining, privatisation and cuts to public services as examples of the impact of this viewpoint.
Environmental policies in the submission are particularly well developed, including: more research into wind power, substantial funding to develop rail freight as an alternative to road, improvements in public transport, additional funds for the rehabilitation of rivers, coasts and waterways, an end to the issuing of woodchip export licences and to logging of old growth forests and a restructuring of the timber industry towards plantations.
To encourage a shift from oil and coal, the submission proposes a carbon tax on these energy sources, with revenue to be spent on public transport and ensuring the equitable application of the tax.
The submission proposes $300 million extra per year on low income public housing, the creation of a land acquisition fund of 1% of total government revenue for Aborigines and for Torres Strait Islanders, additional attention to mental health and measures aimed at equity for women, especially in the area of superannuation. The submission calls for $100 million extra to be allocated each year for ensuring the equal distribution of government services to long-neglected rural areas.
The Greens severely criticise the government's crocodile tears for the unemployed and support the general approach of the National Community Forum on Unemployment — which includes the ACTU, ACOSS, ACF and others. Specifically, the submission includes the extension of such labour market programs as Leap and Jobskills. It projects the establishment of a Community Services Corporation aimed at improving community infrastructure and funded at $500 million per year by 1996-97.
The Greens criticise government attempts to simply reclassify the long-term unemployed or to rely on market forces for a solution: "We reject the notion that the community is served by tackling unemployment through maintaining high levels of economic growth relying on a reserve army of unemployed to contain wage demands. Subsidised private sector jobs such as Jobstart and empty training programs like Jobtrain should decline."
Other proposals include a substantial increase and retargeting of foreign aid, an end to military aid to PNG, Indonesian, Filipino and other governments guilty of human rights abuses and a $107 million per year cut in defence spending. The Greens advocate a "top up tax" of 2.5% on incomes over $100,000 and a minimum 20% corporate tax, also proposed by the Democrats. They support a jobs levy "in the absence of adequate and progressive taxation ... of the options we prefer the most progressive, generating the most revenue.'
They note that "there is significant scope for further revenue collection without disadvantaging ordinary Australians".