Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've got a campaign running in Australia attacking Western Australia's fabulous gas industry—an industry that not only employs huge numbers of people and not only pays billions of dollars in taxes but is one of the key drivers of the economy in Western Australia. It satisfies the geostrategic need for energy of some of our closest and most important allies, and it is also a very key industry for the future energy supplies in this country.

What is one way you can guarantee you will get less gas into the system? That is to whack a new 25 per cent tax on it, which is what Senator David Pocock and the Australia Institute are proposing and are drumming up supposed support for in the Australian community. But I think that, once you speak to the Australian community and explain to them the importance of gas and the structure of the industry, they quickly understand that such a proposal is not only massively counterproductive but also economically unfair and would damage Australia's reputation as a good investment destination.

Let's get a few facts on the table. The gas industry paid $21.9 billion in taxes and royalties in the 2024-25 financial year alone. This is not an industry that pays no tax. Those on the other side and those in the left love to compare numbers with other things, so what would that number compare to in terms of the Australian budget? That is almost the entire annual cost of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. So that is what the Australian gas industry provides. The ATO has confirmed that oil and gas companies are amongst the largest taxpayers in Australia.

How do the Australia Institute manage to sow so much confusion? They do so because of the sheer eye-watering amounts that the gas companies need to invest upfront in order to extract anything. This has amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of the last 30 years. The upfront investment on gas projects is simply massive, and in order to make that investment those companies need certainty as to the future arrangements they will be operating under. Those gas companies—including the great Woodside, a Western Australian company, but also foreign companies like INPEX, headquartered in Japan—came to Australia and invested those billions of dollars on an understanding of our tax arrangements and our payments.

What are Senator Pocock, the Australia Institute and others at the end of the chamber proposing? They are proposing to change the rules of the game—not halfway through but more than halfway through. They're proposing that Australia start to look like Mongolia, which is trying to change the tax arrangements for a major copper mine some 17 years after it was built. They want Australia to look like a developing country in terms of its engagement with the rest of the world, particularly with key geostrategic partners like Japan.

This is a nonsense policy. The gas industry does pay its way. It pays billions in taxation. Over the next few years it's scheduled to pay around $8 billion in PRRT. This is an industry that has enormously contributed to the economic growth and success of my home state of Western Australia. It is an industry in which we need to see future investment because we are going to need that gas flowing into the Western Australia domestic industry and the Western Australian domestic energy market for a very long time to come.

What we actually need in this country is state governments willing to put their own money where their mouths are and invest in long-term contracts for the supply of gas. That would overcome almost all of the problems that we have in this sector. Instead we have negative proposals from the radical left, which seeks to destroy this great industry.