I really did promise myself I would keep an open mind when I downloaded the Australian Greens’ Economic Recovery Plan for Australia. We are, after all, living in a time where all ideas should be considered on their merit. So it was with this open mind that I was fully prepared to give the party due consideration.
But oh boy, even I could not have been prepared for the level of masturbatory first year university socialist wank bank ideas splurged onto this mish mash of discarded tissues they call an economic plan.
When Adam Bandt told reporters last week that Australia somehow had a magic money tree called the economy, it appears he wasn’t joking. The Greens evidently really do believe money grows on trees. Trawling through this document, a conservative estimate is that they want at least half $1 trillion in new spending, and much of it on an annual basis. That figure is also not taking into full account the uncosted thought bubbles.
Below is the list of most of what they want to introduce. Now, sure, in a utopia where money may grow on trees, maybe some of these ideas might be worthwhile. I have previously been on the record advocating for the expansion of free childcare, but good grief, the sheer level of dreaming from this wish list makes you wonder if calculators were discarded for acid while they wrote thought bubbles onto post-it notes and stuck them around Adam Bandt’s office before making some poor soul cobble it together into a report.
- Manufacturing Australia Fund – $12 billion
- Clean energy technology innovation – $200 million
- Creating Australia’s Future Fund – $300 million
- One Billion Stories Fund – $1 billion
- Australia Live Fund – $1 billion
- Build 500,000 public and community homes (uncosted)
- Grid Transformation Fund – $6 billion
- Clean Energy Generation – (“unlocking” 700 billion in investment. Unclear whether they intend for this to be government funded)
- Rail and Bus Services -$25 billion
- Cycling and Walking – $250 million annually
- Nature Fund – $6 billion
- Habitat Taskforce (uncosted)
- 4% of GDP spend on research and development -$57 billion
- Free childcare (uncosted)
- Home Care Package – $3 billion
- Increase Foreign Aid (uncosted)
- Extend Jobkeeper and Jobseeker to casual, contract and temporary visa holders (uncosted)
- Double the rate of Jobseeker for Disability Support Pension and Carers (uncosted)
- Remote Development and Employment Scheme for Indigenous Australians (uncosted)
- National Anti-Racism Campaign (uncosted)
- Next Gen Guarantee giving all people under 30 a job (uncosted)
- Oversight body in charge of the Job Guarantee Program (uncosted)
- Free University, TAFE, apprenticeships and traineeships (uncosted)
- Maintain Jobseeker rate at $1115 a fortnight (uncosted)
- Lift the minimum wage to 60% of average adult weekly earnings ($1750 is the average. This would mean $1050 a week – and it would basically bring small businesses to the wall, particularly in the wake of the economic devastation they have just experienced)
These expensive programs the Greens expect to run while closing down every fossil fuel industry in Australia, thereby immediately halting our most lucrative exports and losing the economy at least $80 billion a year.
The real howler in this ‘plan’ is the Next Gen Guarantee where they plan to offer every Australian aged 18-29 a job if they want one. They plan on inventing jobs for the sake of jobs, whether or not they serve a productive purpose. This is where the real economic illiteracy comes to the fore. The Greens don’t understand that true value from an economy comes from productivity, and productivity will eventually create jobs in time, but you can’t just invent them out of thin air.
YOU get a job and YOU get a job and YOU get a job. EVERYBODY gets a job!
The great economist, Milton Friedman, put it perfectly. Friedman once recalled visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Friedman replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it is jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
You cannot just invent jobs for the sake of jobs. They have to serve a purpose, otherwise they merely serve as a drag on the economy.
Okay. So we have the jobs for the sake of jobs program, and then there’s also the promise of free university, TAFE, apprenticeships and traineeships that is completely uncosted. Sounds great in theory, but when you marry that to all of the other spending and the rocket launcher they want to fire onto our exports, one wonders if this is the work of a fair dinkum political party, or a work of satire where the purpose is for us to have a hearty chuckle.
They want to build 500,000 community homes from thin air while also increasing our foreign aid to 0.7 percent of national income. Want to know how much that is? Well, Australia’s national income right now is $1.25 Trillion. So the Greens presumably want to spend $8.7 billion annually on foreign aid while paying for all of their other programs.
They want to lift the minimum wage to $1050 a week, thereby forcing small businesses around the country to pay exorbitant wages while they try to recoup losses from the pandemic. It is a recipe for disastrous unemployment. Which I suppose is okay, because the Greens plan on giving all unemployed a job out of thin air anyway, so problem solved, I guess.
Did they include details on how to pay for their plan, you ask. Well, that’s the best part. They did. And you guessed it: they pretty much plan to borrow money to pay for all of it, even though the cost will be on an annual basis so the debt would just keep piling on.
Seriously, if you ever needed more evidence that the Greens are merely just a sideshow distraction of dopey economic illiterates with no intention or capacity to ever be a party of government, then this cobbled together list of socialist fantasies written with crayons and stuck together with clag is all you need to read.
The Thought Hub 
Leave a comment