Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The planet deserves better; people deserve better. While the Labor government cries poor, it has been another really good week for the boss of your lobbyists, who walk away with a smile and another year's freedom to destroy the planet without worrying at all about paying tax on enormous profits. That this pantomime is so familiar makes it no less depressing. If you earn a wage, you pay tax. If you don't earn a wage and you receive income support, you probably still pay tax. If you purchase goods and services, you pay tax. If you access health care, you pay tax. If you contribute to your super, you pay tax. If you take out home insurance, you pay tax. If you pop down to the pub for a schooner—or in my case, a cheeky mocktail—you pay tax.

But if you are a multibillion dollar company extracting and exporting Australian gas, chances are you pay no tax or next to no tax. Nurses in Australia pay more personal income tax than oil and gas companies. Teachers pay double the tax paid by oil and gas companies. The Labor government even collects more each year from student debt repayments than it does from companies who dig up and ship out our natural resources. The truth is companies like Chevron and Santos are massively ripping us off. There is zero tax paid on over half of all gas exported from our country. While the major gas companies rake in billions, loopholes and write-offs mean they are paying negligible amounts of company tax or the failed petroleum resource rent tax.

The Albanese government is making bad budget choices yet again. They refuse to tax their big donors and make them pay their fair share, but they'll kick disabled people off the NDIS while finding hundreds of billions of dollars of public money for non-existent nuclear subs. They'll tinker with the housing policy in a performative act of so-called intergenerational equity and boast about their bottom line, but they won't scrap the punitive, disastrous fee hikes and funding cuts of the job-ready graduates scheme. By taxing gas exports at 25 per cent, we can collect $17 billion a year to pay for the things people need to live a good life. It shouldn't be a big ask. It is not a big ask. It is just about fairness.

Yes, the Greens do want to make the top end of town pay their fair share, because it is way past time. We want to invest in quality public services, to provide care for those who need it, to provide free education, to make sure housing is affordable and accessible to everyone, and to transition to clean energy and a fossil-free future. We are proud of that. I want to congratulate my colleague Senator Hodgins-May on her incredibly hard work on this inquiry. Under her leadership, the committee has produced an undeniable and overwhelming body of evidence to support a gas tax. We know that this is really popular policy. People know what is fair and what is unfair.

My heart and hopes have been lifted by the community's loud and vocal support for the Greens plan to legislate a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports to fund urgent cost-of-living relief. The Albanese government knows this too. They know it very well. They have heard it from hundreds of people and hundreds of experts. The ball is now in their court. They can be cowardly and side with war-profiteering multinational gas corporations, or they can stand with the people of this country.