Greens candidate for Gilmore Debbie Killian believes two main inter-related issues are at the heart of the upcoming election - the cost of living crisis and the environment.

And she thinks the people of Gilmore deserve better when it comes to the solutions offered up by the Labor Party and the Coalition leading into the May 3 vote.

“The first issue is the cost of living crisis and the way that Australians are hurting in terms of their ability to keep a roof over their head and food on their table and struggling with mortgages,” she told The Bugle.

“And the second one would be the environment and in particular the need to urgently change to renewables and away from fossil fuels as our energy source.

“There are many things that come under those issues so when you look at cost of living, for example, there's issues around supermarket prices and the idea that supermarkets price gouge so that they're getting very high profits in a time when people are really struggling.

“The Greens have proposed for some time that the government needs to take action around that.”

When it comes to the debate over how to power Australia into the future, Killian said renewable energy was the only way to go.

“It's well and truly established that renewable energy is going to provide us with the cheapest sorts of energy into the future, but the rate at which we transition fully to renewables is something that's a point of difference between even Labor, who accept the need to do it, and and the Greens,” Killian said.

“We think for the sake of the planet and for the sake of Australians and their energy bills we need to do this with some urgency and that means investing heavily in the things that are gonna make that possible for everyone.

“There needs to be specific support for households around getting solar power in particular but also there's a lot of ways in which community projects can be encouraged and in rural areas where properties can be supported to shift to renewables whether it's wind or solar for their own use.”

One of the central planks in the Greens’ policy of funding a greater investment in renewable energy is to go after the corporations and Australia’s richest citizens to ensure they pay a higher level of tax. 

“We need to change quite substantially the way we gather taxes or who we gather them from in order to fund these sorts of things that we need to do,” she added.

“It's going to cost a lot of money to push forward to subsidise people to get renewables but also to push forward the projects and the technologies that we need to bring them in fairly rapidly.

“We will tax the coal and gas producers who pay little or no tax - hitting them for a significant component of tax.

“We've got a costed plan that has us raising $514 million more than we raise in tax by taxing those people in the fossil fuel industries and also big corporations, many of whom pay little or no tax, and really high wealth individuals.

“The Greens would dare to tax them a super wealth tax. That would be quite a substantial hit for them but leave them with a great deal of money in their pockets to still keep spending.”

Killian argued one of the main reasons that Australia’s wealthiest people and businesses get off the hook at tax time is due to the major parties being reliant on them for their own funding.

“It takes a lot to stand up to the corporations. Frankly, the two big parties see those corporations as what makes the world go round,” she said.

“They rely on them for donations to keep them funded and they let them into the negotiations. They let them in to lobby them in parliament offices. They have inordinate influence in how decisions are made.”

A lack of trust in the major parties has resulted in big swings away from them at recent elections and Killian thinks that change in the political landscape will mostly benefit Australia.

“I think that's a really positive thing to move away from the two parties,” she said. 

“But it isn't parties that are the problem, it's those two parties. The Greens are a grassroots organisation but we have organisation behind us and we have very clear policies that people can see.

“When you go to a meet the candidates forum in this area, I'm the person who's standing up with 51 policies on our website that are very clear that don't change in crazy ways just before the election.

“We don't do backflips on things. We have our policies - they are developed with and by our grassroots members and they are things that you can count on. 

“A combination of transparent and highly principled parties and some independents is a really good combination for Australian democracy.

“We are a smaller party but we are not a minor party. We have significant influence.

“There's a real undercurrent in the attitude of the current government to the Greens. They don't like to be pushed. That's our job - we’re there to push.”