The Greens new Big Government agenda proposes that the RBA compete with the banks in the home mortgage market with the establishment of The People's Bank.

Homebuyers could borrow up to 60 per cent of the value of a property from the RBA and the minimum interest rate would be 3.5 per cent – 3 per cent plus 0.5 per cent for administration costs.

The interest rate would only rise if the official cash rate rose above 3 per cent.

"But it will always deliver loans that householders can pay off faster and with significant savings on interest compared to the current offerings of the big banks," Senator Di Natale will say.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale concedes defeat next to candidate Alex Bhathal. AAP

"The People's Bank will give current and future homeowners a much needed advantage over investors. It will help turn around the recent decline in home ownership rates. It will also help stem the flow of lazy profits to the banks and inject some real competition into the banking sector."

In the biggest policy shift, Senator Di Natale will raise the white flag on trying to put a price on carbon because the prospect of an effective price being adopted by Parliament is "almost non-existent".

"We simply can't afford to have another two decades of slow progress. Politics has so far failed us and we've reached the point where we can't waste any more time," he will say.


"It's time for government to step in."

Senator Di Natale lists a range of interventionist approaches including phasing out all coal-fired power by 2030, nationalising the electricity grid, establishing a government energy retailer, and phasing out petrol cars by 2030.

"Government intervention now looks like the only pathway by which we will transition fast enough away from a centralised, polluting energy system to one designed around distributed renewable energy and storage," he will say.

He will also repeat a Greens call for a Universal Basic Income, which would incorporate universal access to social services health education and housing.

Anticipating criticism from the right, Senator Di Natale will point out that other policy ideas the Greens first proposed and which were once considered loony, have subsequently been adopted by one or both of the major parties. These include a bank levy, a banking royal commission, curbs on negative gearing and capital gains tax breaks for investors, taxing trusts as companies, legalising same-sex marriage and voluntary euthanasia, and as Labor has recently announced, scrapping franking credit cash refunds for people who pay little or no tax while protecting pensioners.

Senator Di Natale will point out that he was attacked by Labor during the recent Batman bylection campaign for supporting Labor's franking credits policy but vowing to use the Greens' numbers in the Senate to protect pensioners. Last week, Labor backflipped and said pensioners, full and part-time, would be exempted.