Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I don't know that I've ever been more distressed by a populist, un-Australian agenda than I am by this one. I came to this parliament because I believe in Australia. I love that we are one of the First World countries of the world, that we are prosperous, that we can afford fantastic health care and education, and that we have roads, schools and hospitals. We will debate in here about where they should be and how much we should spend on them, but at the end of the day we have choices. We have choices because Australia is one of the most blessed countries on the planet. We have coal, oil and gas. We have uranium, critical minerals, rare earths and all the base metals that we need to trade. It is mining that pays the bills in Australia. The first, second and third biggest taxpayers in this country are from those industries, and we are blessed to receive foreign investment to allow us to unlock that potential.

But we tinker around with our settings and our trade relationships at our peril, and I can tell you why it's at our peril because other countries have gone down this road. Let me tell you the story of another country similarly blessed with minerals, resources and agricultural produce. In the 1980s, they too decided to become a socialist country. They too decided to change their settings on foreign investment and exports, and they absolutely cruelled their gas and beef industries. I speak of Argentina, which now seeks to reposition itself with highly competitive, aggressive, assertive trade settings to attract gas investment back to that country. We don't have to do that. Australia has enjoyed 40 per cent of the world's LNG investment into this country. That has fuelled small businesses and big businesses. It has fuelled royalty payments and PRRT payments and, of course, the employment of hundreds of thousands of Australians, who have enjoyed jobs that are more than double—sometimes four or five times—the average salary. These are the people who live in Australia and do the hard work in order to access these resources.

We speak specifically about gas. Gas is not just for energy. Gas is used for fertiliser that allows us to only use a fraction of the surface of the planet in order to grow the amount of food that we need for our nations—for our population. Gas is used for polythene pipe. Gas is used to make all sorts of fuels and the little tubes that you're hooked up to in hospital. They're used for the gas that keeps food safe. It is used for so many reasons.

And Australian gas is important. It's important because, when we mine it here, when we access it here, it's not only important geopolitically—it's important right now for our trade arrangements for liquid fuels. It is important for Australia's prosperity, and, if you care about emissions, well, Australians emissions are lower than in some of the other countries that would be accessing their gas. They're three reasons why we should be extracting gas here.

But we will not continue to extract gas here if we scare off investors. I've already talked about the slide from 40 per cent to 15 per cent, and, if we go with this ridiculous, crazy, socialist plan of increasing gas taxes when we have a very well researched and substantive arrangement for offshore gas, the PRRT—onshore gas is captured by state royalty plans—if we go down this road, we risk losing that investment. That is an investment that does pay the bills.

Let me run through some of the absolute lies that have been peddled by the anti-fossil-fuel activists around this. The first one is that we pay more for gas that we import than we export—lie. We don't import any gas at all.

The second is that nurses and teachers pay more tax than is paid in PRRT. As an ex-economist, they're lies, lies and damn statistics. If you take a 10-year period and you average wages for or tax paid by nurses and teachers and you do it over the same period that these projects are coming online and not yet producing—or, if they are producing, have not yet been able to deduct their capital costs, which is the arrangement under the PRRT—you can make the numbers say anything at all. That is another lie—to say that nurses and teachers pay more tax and then pick a specific period to skew the numbers.

Another is that beer pays more tax than the PRRT, again picking numbers and periods of time over these huge projects. There has been $440 billion spent in Australia to develop our gas reserves over the last 15 years—extraordinary numbers. Beer does not produce more income and tax for Australia than gas does.

The ATO is constantly misquoted as saying that gas companies are tax avoiders. They have corrected the record in this regard in person and in writing, over and over, and yet the lie's still repeated.

The next one is that Japan receives more tax on Australian gas than Australia does—another outrageous lie that has been absolutely put to bed by the Australia Institute's report itself. The Australia Institute claims that energy import tax produces A$8 billion per year for the Japanese government. It excludes the fact that that is on coal and oil as well as gas. The Australia Institute then says $1.8 billion of that energy import tax comes from gas; however, Australian gas only accounts for 40 per cent of that. So we're now down to $720 million. These are the Australia Institute's own numbers. They don't want to clarify their references.

It is dangerous if we seek to fiddle with the investment settings that provide so much income to Australia in payroll tax, in company tax, in state royalties and, yes, in PRRT. It's like a hockey stick, the amount of income that we will receive from that as the capital expenditure is expensed and the superprofits of 40 per cent are paid to Australia over the coming years. This is a dangerous agenda, and guess who is funding it. It is people who have a clear agenda to shut down fossil fuels in Australia—the things that produce our energy, that produce our fertiliser and that could, in future, provide our liquid fuels and our fuel security right here in this country. They won't tell you that the 25 per cent gas tax—that policy, that regime—is being pushed by organisations like the Sunrise Project and the KR Foundation. When this same agenda, the anti-gas agenda, was run in England, it was later found by NATO to have been run by Russia seeking to undermine the UK's energy and economic sovereignty. Do you not think the same thing is happening here in Australia?

We should be angry, because this populist agenda run by people who seek to shut down investment in oil and gas and coal in Australia is run by people who do not want us to be successful. They will dangle baubles like 'You will get more tax' and 'We will spend it on things that do not make us money into the future and that will leave Australia broke and poor in the future'. This is an anti-Australian agenda. I plead. I beg. If you have any interest in Australia and Australia continuing to be a First World country, ask some more questions. Ask who is funding these organisations—who is funding the Australia Institute, who is funding IEEFA, who is funding Punters Politics, who is funding senators in this place's private foundations and the KR Foundation. These organisations are receiving millions and millions of dollars that put any gas industry contributions to shame. In fact, I only wish they would fund us in the same way that this dark money that seeks to shut down Australia's prosperity is flooding into this country and is funding this outrageous campaign that will damage us. The government's move for the reservations policy will seek to do the same. I beg you: ask the better questions.