Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I was a bit confused as to who to ask this question to, given Senator Brandis's recent experience with recovering revenue for the Commonwealth, but I will direct my question to the Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Cormann. Yesterday the Australian National Audit Office published a bombshell report into the collection of North West Shelf royalty revenue. ANAO found that $5 billion worth of deductions were claimed by oil and gas companies despite many of these deductions not being permitted on the Commonwealth royalty schedule. They also found that it had been 17 years since the department of industry audited the oil and gas companies' procedures for royalty calculations. How many hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue have gone begging because of this basic lack of scrutiny? Will the government be establishing a multidepartment task force into fixing this mess?