By Christine Milne
Labor plans to spend $13,850,000,000 on fossil fuel subsidies for big mining companies in the next four years. Let's change that.
The Greens would end these subsidies and use the money to care for people - not for big mining corporations. Please, sign our petition to cut them in this year’s Budget.
Labor is forcing families into poverty by cutting vital support for single parents, sometimes by up to $100 a week. Planning to give nearly $14 billion to some of the most profitable companies in history at the same time is the symptom of a moral crisis.
It gets worse. These billions of dollars are fuelling global warming by making it cheaper for big mining corporations to pollute and giving them special tax treatment to explore – in other words, to extract more coal, oil and gas!
If you’re serious about cutting pollution and building clean energy, you don’t pour billions of dollars into fossil fuels at the same time. Tony Abbott’s Coalition has made its allegiance to the mining lobby very clear, but Labor is following a dangerous path of saying one thing on clean energy and doing another.
Help us end fossil fuel subsidies in this year’s Budget. Sign our petition, and ask one of your friends to do the same, so we can build this campaign to May 14.
Costings I requested from the Parliamentary Budget Office reveal how much Labor wants to spend on these subsidies:
Diesel fuel rebates, which give mining companies a massive tax refund on their fossil fuel bills - $7.95 billion over four years;
Accelerated depreciation on exploration, which rewards mining companies for oil drilling, coal exploration and more - $4.05 billion over four years; and,
Accelerated depreciation on assets - $1.85 billion over four years.
These figures are daunting - but we know that the pressure to end these subsidies, which we’ve all helped to build over years, is working.
A Freedom of Information request revealed last week that mining companies are telling the Government they’re worried they’ll lose their special tax treatment.[1] And if you’ve switched on a television in the last week, you’ll know the mining lobby is throwing everything they have at another advertising campaign, trying to scare the old parties into yet more backdowns.
Well, we’re not scared. And neither are you.
Community groups are building campaigns across Australia for the right priorities in this year’s Budget - supporting single parents, investing in public schools, funding disability insurance and more.
The next step is building this petition with one simple ask: end these subsidies for billionaire companies and support people instead.
We’ll deliver your signatures to the Government with a splash before the Budget. Can you take the first step in this campaign today, and have your signature delivered to the Prime Minister and Treasurer next month?
Yours,
Christine
P.S. A report into high speed rail, secured as part of the Greens’ agreement with the Prime Minister to form government, demonstrates that it would generate $2.30 in economic benefits for every $1 invested. As a nation, we should be funding visionary projects, not a mining company’s fuel bill. Sign up to be a part of our rapid response Budget campaign to end these subsidies and invest in building the future again. Thanks. CM
[1] Treasury Meeting Brief, obtained by Market Forces under Freedom of Information.