Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Right now, if you're an Aussie enjoying a hard earned schooner, you're contributing more to our national budget than some of the biggest gas companies on the planet. Treasury's own numbers show we raise more from the tax on beer—about $2.7 billion—than we do from the petroleum resource rent tax, which is expected to bring in just $1.5 billion this year. How is that a 'fair crack'? We're taxing Aussies at the pub more than the multinational corporations exporting our natural sovereign resources.

We look at Norway and wonder how they do it. They didn't get that lucky; they got smart. They decided their oil and gas belonged to the people, not just the boardrooms. They built a sovereign wealth fund now worth over 2.8 trillion Aussie dollars. That's more than the annual GDP of Australia. You heard me right. Norway saved more money than our entire country produces in a year. They were able to do this because they had the guts to tax resources properly. Norway fund 20 per cent of their national budget without breaking a sweat. That wealth flows into universal health care, free world-class education and housing treated as a right, not a speculative luxury. In Australia, we're doing the opposite. We're squandering a once-in-a-century boom while our own people struggle to find a rental or see a GP.

If the Labor and Liberal parties are serious about creating intergenerational equity, it requires more than slogans. It requires action. We must stop being the world's most generous charity for gas giants. The next budget doesn't need to cut government services to manage the deficit. We can just make the gas giants finally pay their share. If we don't, we're just failing our grandkids. We're robbing them of a future they all deserve.