Shoebridge has diagnosed Australia’s economic problems, but tax cuts miss the point

Senator David Shoebridge’s first National Press Club address as Greens leader got a lot right.

He spoke about an economy that is failing ordinary people, decades of privatisation, and a housing crisis that has pushed people into despair and insecurity. On each of these fronts, he’s right.

Australia desperately needs politicians that are willing to challenge the economic policies that have brought us here. We need politicians who understand that these problems aren’t accidents. They are the result of choices governments have made over decades, and they can be undone.

After hearing Shoebridge make such a compelling case for economic transformation, you might reasonably wonder what the Greens are proposing to do about it. The answer, bafflingly, is a tax cut.

The centrepiece of Shoebridge’s speech was a proposal to lift the tax-free threshold, giving most working Australians more than $1,000 a year. This would be accompanied by a matching increase for people receiving income support, all to be funded by higher taxes on gas and mining companies.

There is plenty to welcome in making resource companies pay more tax, and people on Centrelink payments desperately need more money. But the Greens should not be buying into the idea that tax cuts are progressive, and worse still, they should not be presenting tax cuts as redistribution.

When politicians tell us that the best way to improve people’s lives is with tax cuts, they reinforce the idea that tax is a burden rather than something we all benefit from. That’s an argument that Shoebridge should be challenging, not repeating.

Unfortunately, this appears to be part of a shift in the Greens’ economic messaging since the 2025 election, with the party arguing that some people are paying too much tax. That’s a very different argument from saying that wealthy people and corporations aren’t paying their fair share.

To give Shoebridge his due, this announcement was almost certainly set in train before his leadership. It’s hard to imagine a proposal of this scale making its way through the Parliamentary Budget Office and the Greens party room in the few weeks since he took over. But good framing doesn’t make a bad proposal good, and the Greens need to hear that this is the wrong direction.

The Greens are at their best when they expand the political debate. Their proposals for a public housing developer and limits on rent increases are standout examples. They have helped put ideas on the agenda that other parties would prefer to ignore. Now, they risk accepting the terms of a debate that has been dominated by tax cuts for decades.

Every election, civil society organisations face an enormous challenge trying to convince politicians that Australia needs better public services, not another round of tax cuts. Now for the first time, the Greens risk undermining that message too.

We could head into the next election with One Nation, the Coalition and the Greens all promising tax cuts. Whatever the differences between their proposals, the political message will be the same: Australians are paying too much tax, and the answer is to cut it.

That can only push the debate in the wrong direction. By then, the nuance about who pays more and how the cuts are funded will be lost. The Greens will simply be another party calling for lower taxes. What a missed opportunity that would be.

If the Greens want to raise billions from those who aren’t paying their fair share, they should put that money where it will make the biggest difference. Build public and community housing at the scale Australia needs. These are the homes that people on the lowest incomes can actually afford. Put money on the table to push states and territories to introduce limits on rent increases, so renters aren’t constantly losing ground. Deliver a serious boost to Centrelink payments, lifting hundreds of thousands of people above the poverty line.

These are the changes that would make a real difference to the people suffering most in the economy Shoebridge so powerfully described. They would also do something a tax cut cannot, changing the systems that are making people’s lives harder in the first place.

We can only hope that this proposal is an inherited idea rather than a sign of things to come – because Australia needs politicians that are willing to fight for real economic transformation. The Greens should be challenging the idea that tax cuts are an answer to inequality, or even worse, that tax cuts are redistributive.

Shoebridge ended his speech by saying the Greens weren’t there to make Labor better, they were there to replace it. The challenge for the Greens is to propose solutions that match the ambition of his words. Otherwise, they risk replacing Labor in the worst possible way.

Maiy Azize is the spokesperson for Everybody’s Home, a campaign to end Australia’s housing crisis, and she is also the Deputy Director of Anglicare Australia, a network of welfare and caring organisations linked to the Anglican Church.