David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What's the answer to Australia's rising inequality crisis? What's the answer to funding key services like the National Disability Insurance Scheme? What's the answer to getting rid of HECS for the hundreds of thousands or millions of students facing those burdens? What's the answer to funding the renewable energy future so that we can protect the climate for this and future generations? What is the answer to that growing inequality crisis? The answer is having a system that starts taxing wealth instead of work. Of course we should. That's not only a sensible economic model but a fundamentally ethical model.

In this country people are getting more wealth and more material support simply because of what they already own rather than the work they do, rather than attending work. Sometimes families have both parents working two jobs, struggling to get by and getting whacked on marginal income tax, while the richest in this country get wealthier and wealthier and wealthier without ever breaking into a sweat. If you want to know one of the most obscene figures about the growing disparity in this country, look at what the Australia Institute highlighted in their recent report on how to switch our tax model from taxing work to taxing wealth. In the last 20 years, the richest 200 households in this country have raised their wealth from the equivalent of eight per cent of our GDP to some 25 per cent of GDP, holding more than $600 billion in assets themselves. If we applied a two per cent annual wealth tax on just those 200 richest families in this country, we would find an extra $12.5 billion a year to fund the things we need. That's just a two per cent wealth tax on just the 200 wealthiest.

We also need to get rid of the rort on capital gains tax put in by John Howard which means that those with capital gains pay half the tax for doing nothing compared to those who actually do the work and do genuine labour. This is guaranteed structural inequality. If we want a fairer society, we need to tax wealth, not work.