Free Dental for All: Australian Greens’ Latest Election Pitch

Confident Greens leader vows no more coal or gas

Greens candidate for Richmond, Mandy Nolan and Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt speak to media during a doorstop at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on March 29, 2022. (Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

If the Australian Greens hold the balance of power after the next federal election, the left-wing party will push to expand the government’s Medicare program to cover all dental care.

In an address to the National Press Club, leader Adam Bandt revealed that the latest initiative would be funded through stricter—and higher—taxation on the country’s corporations and billionaires.

Several earlier announcements from the party including higher welfare payments, free childcare, and subsidies for energy workers pushed out by renewable energy development, would all be funded by the Greens’ tax plan.

“The Greens will introduce a billionaires’ tax, which will tax the growing list of 131 billionaires in Australia six percent of their wealth every year,” Bandt said.

“We will introduce a corporate super profits tax or tycoon tax, which will get the one in three corporations that currently don’t pay any tax and force them to hand over their excessive profits on anything they make over AU$100 million, and we will crack down on multinational tax avoidance.”

The latest dental announcement is set to cost AU$77.6 billion over a decade, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office, and will cover dental care, orthodontic treatments, oral surgery, periodontics, and prosthodontics.

“Last time the Greens were in the balance of power we got dental into Medicare for kids, and now we’ll finish the job by getting dental into Medicare for everyone,” Bandt said on April 13.

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“The Greens will make [billionaire] Clive Palmer pay more tax so you can fix your teeth,” he said. “In balance of power, the Greens will kick the [Liberals] out and take climate action by stopping new coal and gas mines, and we’ll tackle the cost of living by getting dental and mental health into Medicare, fixing the housing affordability crisis and wiping student debt.”

Bandt is confident his party can secure enough seats to become the “biggest third party” in the Senate, a powerful position that will have a heavy influence over public policy.

“(Predictions) put us on track to be the biggest third party in the Senate ever, to be the biggest ever Greens party room and to be the most powerful third party in the parliament,” he said, vowing to push for an end to coal and gas production.

The party is targeting three Senate seats in Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia. They will also target the lower house seats of Richmond (held by the Labor Party) in New South Wales, Higgins (Liberal) and Macnamara (Labor) in Victoria, as well as Ryan (Liberal), and Griffith (Labor) in Queensland.

The Greens’ march comes as Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese has continued to distance himself from radical elements of the political scene to appeal to the mainstream voter, even ruling out any power-sharing arrangement with the Greens if Labor needed the numbers to form a government.

“I won’t be negotiating or doing deals with the Greens after the election,” Albanese told 2GB radio.

Bandt said that if a hung Parliament were to result, he would not call for another election if a deal could not be struck with Labor.

“If the Australian people deliver a Parliament where multiple voices are represented—and I think that that is the case—we have got no interest in sending people back to a second election,” he said.