Greens Support Construction Union Call For Super Profit Tax To Fund Housing

Members of Victoria Police stand outside the CFMEU Office in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 21, 2021. Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

The Greens have come out in support of the peak construction union, the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining And Energy Union (CFMEU), following their launch of a national campaign for a super profits tax on Australia’s wealthiest companies to fund affordable and social housing.

The launch follows a report commissioned by the union from research by Oxford Economics Australia, which found Australia was short 190,000 social dwellings and 559,000 affordable ones across the country.

CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith in a speech to the National Press Club on July 25, said that an economy-wide tax could raise $290 billion (US$195 billion) over the next decade, comfortably funding the investment required to close the social and affordable housing gap.

“Given the importance of this problem, we are being way too timid,” he told the National Press Club on Tuesday.

“Not only is a super profits tax the best way to generate the funding we need, whilst causing minimal harm, a super profits tax is a positive thing in and of itself.”

Mr. Smith said the tax would only affect 0.3 percent of Australian companies that earn over $100 million, and, according to the report, would comfortably cover the proposed number of houses needed to be built.

“The money exists, the wealth exists, but it doesn’t exist in ordinary Australian households,” he said.

“It exists in the profit columns of a very small and very elite group of corporations.”

Greens Housing and Homelessness spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather said that the Greens welcomed the campaign from the union and said that the report commissioned by the CFMEU was clear.

“The housing crisis will get worse under Labor’s Housing Australia Future Fund unless they invest far more in public and affordable housing, which is exactly what everyone from the Greens to the CFMEU is now pushing for,” said Mr. Chandler-Mather.

“This bold plan from the CFMEU is a brilliant example of the scale and ambition that we need to deal with the rapidly worsening housing crisis. Labor should listen to the union, the Greens and housing experts and produce a plan that will actually start to tackle the scale of the crisis.”

Mr. Chandler-Mather said the Prime Minister was now the only person in the way of a significant national build.

“From the hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate super profits to the quarter of a trillion dollars in Stage 3 Tax Cuts, and the $12 billion in annual tax concessions for property investors—the money is there,” he said.

“Renters want to have high quality, public housing close to where they work and currently live. The construction industry wants to get going on a significant national build, and construction workers are pushing for Labor to pull its finger out.”

Labor Rejects Call

However, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has rejected the union’s proposal, giving a one-word answer when queried if he would support the tax.

“No,” the prime minister said, reported AAP.

The push from the union comes as the Greens and Labor are locked in an ongoing stoush over the Housing Affordability Future Fund (HAFF).

Under the plan, the Australian federal government would create a $10 billion fund (US$6.7 billion) to address the lack of social and affordable housing across the country, with Labor hoping the legislation could help build at least 30,000 homes over five years.

The fund would also exist in perpetuity, and each year, the government would use its returns to invest in housing across the country, with the federal government guaranteeing a minimum of $500 million per year would be used to build new housing.

The delay in passing the HAFF bill costs taxpayers an estimated $1.3 million per day, according to the prime minister, who cited the fund’s potential earnings on June 20.

Left’s Tug-O-War Over Voters

A key election promise for the federal government and the prime minister who grew up in social housing, HAFF has become a key point of disagreement between the Greens and the Australian Labor Party, which has accused the Greens of playing politics with people’s lives.

“For the Greens political party, this isn’t about the Australian people. This is about them. They want the issue, not the outcome. They deal in protests; we focus on progress,” the prime minister told Parliament on June 21.

“You don’t have to think that that’s the case because the member for Griffith has carefully and clearly said the quiet bit in an article that’s been written in the Jacobin magazine. He wrote: ‘This parliamentary conflict helps create the space for a broader campaign in civil society.'”

Mr. Albanese was citing an article by the Greens’ housing spokesperson and MP for the Brisbane seat of Griffith, Mr. Chandler-Mather, in the Jacobin, a left-wing American socialist journal.

In the article, Mr. Chandler-Mather said: “Allowing the HAFF to pass would demobilise the growing section of civil society that is justifiably angry about the degree of poverty and financial stress that exists in such a wealthy country."