Nicolette Boele (Bradfield, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

There was a gas-tax shaped hole in the budget, a $17-billion-per-year sized hole. We could all see it. We were all disappointed by it. In the lead-up to this year's budget, Australians of all political persuasions, people across my electorate and people across the entire country were hoping that this would be the budget where we finally secured a fair return on our natural resources. These resources are owned by the public and yet they're given away often royalty-free and on minimal tax to multinationals and Australian corporations that rake in literally billions of dollars every year. Unfortunately, this budget does nothing to change that.

Since 2022, the absence of a 25 per cent tax on gas exports has cost us over $70 billion. This is a missed opportunity of outstanding proportions—$17 billion a year is around $50 million a day, more than $2 million an hour or $577 a second. All that revenue is flowing to corporate coffers instead of the public purse. These figures sound large, but what do they really mean in practice? What could we do with an extra $17 billion every year? Well, the budget papers make it really easy to put these numbers into perspective. A figure of $17 billion is around $1.5 billion more than the cost of the entire childcare subsidy. It's $4.5 billion more than the total federal funding for public schools. It's more money than the Commonwealth provides to the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. With an extra $17 billion, we could make meaningful improvements to any of these public services, or we could choose to do something else—to invest in some of the things that we all want but are so often told that we can't afford, to fund some of the nice things that other countries have, like free dental care, free university or a film and television industry that's properly supported by this government. The list of possibilities is considerable. Although $17 billion wouldn't fund everything on the list, it would allow us to fund pretty much anything and to improve countless lives across the country in the process. But that remains out of reach so long as we continue to let gas corporations off the hook.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions, alongside think tanks like the Australia Institute, advocates like Konrad from Punter's Politics and so many others have worked really hard over many years to bring this issue to the fore. They've helped build this into a movement that now extends right across the country. Today, everyone knows the government gets more money from students repaying their HECS debt than from the petroleum resources rent tax. Everyone knows that the government pulls in more cash from taxing beer than from the PRRT. Everyone knows that the system is broken and isn't delivering for anyone except the gas lobby. The government knows this as well. They're just choosing to ignore it. The longer they wait, the clearer the polls become.

A majority of voters across the spectrum, from Labor, the Liberals, the Greens, One Nation and Independents, support a 25 per cent tax on gas exports. There is a clear and growing consensus that Australians should receive a fairer return on our publicly owned resources, and yet the Australian government continues to dig in its heels. It claims that the industry already pays its fair share but uses statistics derived from the gas lobby to support these claims. It says 'our gas is keeping the lights on in Tokyo' but neglects to mention that Japan resells vast quantities of gas than it imports from Australia. And Japan makes even more money by taxing the gas that they import from us than the money we make by taxing our own exports to them. Time and time again, the government repeats lines from the gas lobby. It's just an undeniably clear case of vested interests versus public interest in this situation—and the government continues to wonder why its primary vote is consistently declining.

In the lead-up to the budget, the Prime Minister dismissed this reform as 'populist'. This is a mistake. When the Prime Minister calls this proposed reform 'populist', he is seeking to diminish your valid concerns. He is trying to convince you that it's unreasonable to desire a fair return on the resources that you own. He is trying to persuade you that you simply cannot ask for more of what is already yours. And when he blocks this reform, he's not just disregarding the will of the people; he's hamstringing his own government's ability to deliver the services and cost-of-living support that we all so desperately need. And that's exactly what we saw in the budget. We've heard two things from the government in the past few weeks. First, we heard about the need to find savings wherever we could. And second, we heard that this budget would be all about tax reform. By deciding to leave a gas export tax off this budget, the government has directly undermined both of these goals.

If the government chose to raise that extra $17 billion, it would be under far less pressure to reduce funding and cut valuable services. We would not, for example, be forcing people with disabilities to bear the brunt of government savings through NDIS cuts. And if this budget was focused on tax reform, why did the government leave the most obvious area for reform untouched? In fact, the budget shows revenue from the existing tax on offshore gas, the PRRT, is actually going down. It's going down from $1.9 billion this year to $1.25 billion in 2029-30. This projected decline is coming despite high international gas prices caused by the wars in Ukraine and Iran. It is coming down despite huge increases in gas export volumes. And it is coming down despite the changes made to the PRRT in 2023, which the government claimed would increase revenue.

In light of this, you'd be thinking the government would be chomping at the bit to secure an extra $17 billion a year. Although it has chosen to let this opportunity pass, the fight is not over. The budget is not the only window for reform. The government could turn around tomorrow and announce a 25 per cent gas export tax if it so chose to. And I believe the pressure will continue to grow. My colleagues on the crossbench and I will continue beating the drum on this issue. We will be keeping your voice alive and loud; we'll be giving voice to your demands. And with your help, it won't be long before the government simply can't afford to ignore us anymore.

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