Peter Georgiou (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Can I just begin by saying that it's great to see the Australian Labor Party's adopting a key policy and mantra developed by One Nation. Ensuring multinationals pay their fair share of tax is something that One Nation has been banging on about for some considerable time now. Let me take you back to some key points I made earlier this year when I introduced my private senator's bill which was aimed at ensuring greater transparency of what multinationals pay in the gas industry—which was voted down by the government and the opposition, by the way. By the end of the year, Australia will have exported $35 billion of liquefied natural gas. We will become, if we are not already, the largest exporter of LNG in the world. We allow companies to explore and produce the petroleum from our offshore reserves, and rightly so. These companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating jobs for our workers. But the true owners of these petroleum resources are the Australian people, and it is only fair that the Australian people get fair compensation for their resources, which is why Labor introduced the petroleum resource rent tax, or the PRRT, back in 1988. Unfortunately, this legislation has failed, and we get no payment for the gas that drives billions of dollars of exports. Not only do multinationals not pay for the gas, but they also don't pay tax on profits made from the sale of this gas, because they create losses on paper. It is only fair that these petroleum companies, like other multinationals operating in Australia, pay their fair share of tax. Right now, the system is not fair.

The gas industry is worthy of more attention. The handful of companies that control our gas need to be held to account and to pay for non-renewable resources that they take and for the profits made from these non-renewable resources through corporate income tax. Australia is set to overtake Qatar as the largest exporter of gas in the world, but we will receive just a fraction of the revenue—$800 million compared to Qatar's $26.6 billion. That $800 million largely comes from the Bass Strait gas fields that supply Australia and are not for export. The very real possibility that Australia, as it becomes the world's largest exporter of LNG, may never collect any direct payments from its natural resources is simply embarrassing. Consecutive governments have failed the Australian people. Even countries that we give foreign aid to perform better in their resource revenue management than Australia. According to one report, Australia ranks 32nd in the world. We scored lower than Botswana and Ivory Coast. It is time for the government to act and stop the ripping-off of the people of Australia.