Turnbull should fund Newstart increase, not his tax cut fantasy

Greens Treasury spokesperson, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, says the Turnbull Government has no plan to address inequality but continues to float thought bubbles to distract the public from his incompetence.

Senator Whish-Wilson said, “Malcolm Turnbull keeps trying to pull rabbits out a hat to save his Government but all of the rabbits have turned into turkeys. First it was an ideas boom that immediately went bust, then a plan for ‘value-capture’ to fund infrastructure that was dead on arrival and let’s not forget the plan to hand income tax powers to the states that lasted three days.

“While Malcolm keeps having his ideas that go nowhere, all we end up with in reality is cuts to services and social support.

“Make no mistake, any shortfall in revenue from cutting taxes will be made up with more cuts to services or wrongly issued robo-debt notices.

“If Turnbull has given up on the budget emergency and he wants to support the economy, the first thing he should do is raise the unemployment payment support so that thousands of Australians aren’t unnecessarily living way below the poverty line.

“The Greens know we can pay for this easily through stopping the rorts in negative gearing and capital gains tax, fixing the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax and not blowing billions on the failed Joint Strike Fighter purchase.

“If we raise the rate for Newstart Allowance it would benefit the economy as all of that money would be spent immediately, rather than stashed in investment properties. Then at least some poor unemployed kids could afford to re-register their cars to get to the next job interview,” he concluded.