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

Senator McKim has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today, as shown at item 12 of today's Order of Business:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

"The Government must impose a gas export levy of at least 25% on mega-profiting gas companies, using the revenue to support Australians being smashed by spiralling fuel and energy costs."

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right now, while an illegal war wages in the Middle East, companies like Santos are set to reap blood-soaked profits. These companies have ripped off Australians' resources for decades because of Australia's broken tax system that lets them take almost all of our gas for free. Well, time's up. An overwhelming majority of the public across the political spectrum supports the need for a minimum 25 per cent gas tax export—a minimum! This could raise $17 billion a year, to ease household energy bills, to fund disaster recovery and to accelerate the transition away from the gas that currently ties household energy bills to global conflict.

Labor, the coalition and One Nation all voted it down, doing the bidding of the gas lobby, as we have become so accustomed to them doing in this place. They voted to let Santos keep profiteering from war, but the war profits are only part of the story. Across Australia, families are also paying the price of Santos's climate pollution and destruction. In Queensland, communities who have barely recovered from Tropical Cyclone Koji were just hit by Cyclone Narelle. In Victoria, communities endured catastrophic fires, flash flooding and extreme heat. The Northern Territory has just experienced five climate disasters in a single season, and Katherine braces for floods as I speak. All the while, Santos executives are rubbing their hands, ready to trash the Territory in pursuit of more climate-wrecking gas.

For just over 12 months now, South Australia's oceans have been under siege. For a whole year, a toxic algal bloom, driven by polluters like Santos, has destroyed millions of ocean animals. It has ripped across 20,000 kilometres of coast, shredded the economy and broken people's hearts. Every morning, locals walk the beaches to count the bodies, to label the location, time and species, and to report them to researchers—dolphins, sharks and seals gone. While coastal businesses struggle to survive, Santos is swimming in profit. While children, my children, ask me why there are so many dead rays on the beach, Santos is drilling for more gas. South Australia's marine emblem is a thing of fragile, extraordinary beauty. And I have here in Canberra 100 of them sent to me by devastated communities.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When will Santos be held accountable for their climate destruction, and when will the gas exporters be taxed?

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The senator knows having props are not within the standing orders. I ask you to remove those. Point of order, Senator O'Sullivan?

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Choice in Childcare and Early Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Acting Deputy President, may I suggest that, when the call, by you, has been given, the microphones be cut, because the senator was able to continue and was able to be heard.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have reminded the senator of the standing orders and I will ask her to remove them from the chamber.

When there is some respect in the chamber, we will continue. Senator McDonald, you have the call.

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

It is hard to believe, in a nation that relies on resources—whether it be mining resources or gas extraction—that we would have such economic vandalism happening from the Greens. They continue to ignore that it is mining that pays the bills, that it is gas extraction that pays the bills, and we are in enormous competition with the other parts of the world that also have fantastic resources. We've seen Australian gas companies investing offshore, rather than here in Australia, thanks to the activism that's been organised by some of those political parties. We are seeing investment, small business investment and Australian jobs exported offshore as a result of this sort of grandstanding.

It is also incredibly difficult to understand at a time when gas production in trade is what guarantees us fuel supply. It's this wicked circle. Over the last 10 years, we have seen more oil and gas extraction leave this country because of the impacts of activists—activists who drive their four-wheel drives onto the beaches to protest these things; I love the hypocrisy of that. It is because of that that we are seeing less investment and less oil production here. Let's be clear: twenty years ago we had fuel security in this country. We produced enough oil to support our six or seven refineries. That's what Australia had.

Now, under this crazy agenda, we are seeing people not investing into oil and gas production. Instead, we're seeing policies like this one where we seek to increase taxes with no guarantee of where they would go. If it were up to the Greens, who knows where the taxes would go. Our economy is in the most dire straits—certainly since I've been working, I would say, apart from when we had the recession we had to have in the nineties. Now we have inflation skyrocketing, interest rates increasing, real wages down to 2011 levels and a high cost of living, and it is thanks to this government's out-of-control spending. This is not happening in any other of the leading economies of the world, but it's happening right here in Australia.

Labor's own resources minister said a few weeks ago:

… imposing new costs on the gas industry would freeze gas production in this country, and a tax on gas exports, as was proposed by those opposite in the last election, would discourage investment in the new supply we need to back up our transition to net zero.

The idea that we are going to tax our way into prosperity makes absolutely no sense at all. I can guarantee that the new gas projects here in Australia, which would serve to support families, households and small businesses right around Australia, will dry up. Those investments in gas will dry up if this sort of policy goes ahead.

At a time when we are seeing a tax on infrastructure in the Middle East and at a time when shipments are blocked in the Strait of Hormuz, gas remains a necessity for energy production globally and Australia needs to do more, not less. Yet that is what more taxes do. They dry up investment, they drive away competition for investment into this country, and we will see less investment here, which means fewer taxes received in Australia. Gas paid more than the amount of the PBS for last year. Under this policy we would not see increased taxes—the fantasy tax scenario that the Greens are proposing. We would instead see less investment and fewer taxes, both now and into the future.

We want to see more investment and more streamlined approvals with faster approval times so that we can get back to having our own capacity to produce here. We want to get back to producing the 90 per cent of oil that we need for refineries right here in Australia, rather than having to rely on offshore production, as we have under Labor. (Time expired)

Charlotte Walker (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today so we can cut through a little bit of the noise. When people hear 'gas export tax' or 'PRRT reform', most people aren't thinking of tax design; they're thinking, 'Why does everything feel so expensive right now?' Rent, groceries, power, petrol—it's all stacking up. The reality is a lot of Australians feel like they're doing everything right and still not getting ahead. That's the actual issue sitting underneath this debate. The proposal we're looking at today is to put a 25 per cent export levy on gas companies. On the surface that sounds like an easy fix. Big profits, big tax—problem solved. Unfortunately, policy doesn't work that easily in practice. As we've seen, when you start messing with supply in a tight global market, especially right now, you're not just hitting companies; you're affecting prices, investment and ultimately what people are paying at home. If we get that wrong, it's not the CEOs who feel that first; it's households. That is the part we cannot ignore.

That is why this government has done lots in this area. We've reformed the petroleum resource rent tax, so companies are paying more and paying it earlier. That's already showing up in the numbers, adding billions in revenue. And more companies are actually contributing. It's not hypothetical, or 'maybe, in 10 years'; it's happening now. This matters, because the revenue isn't just sitting there; it's funding the things that people actually rely on: energy bill relief; cheaper medicines; rent assistance; tax cuts for working families. That's the connection.

If you want to talk about the cost of living, you can't just talk about where the money comes from; you have to talk about where it goes, and, right now, we're working hard to make sure it's going back into helping people with higher costs and global uncertainty. We've increased rent assistance for over a million households; boosted income support for over one million Australians; and delivered tax cuts across the board, with more coming. These aren't just abstract ideals; this is current cash flow.

On energy, which is where this whole conversation starts, we're not just reacting; we're trying to stabilise things. That's because energy prices don't exist in a vacuum; they're tied to global markets, supply chains, the current conflict—all of it. So the job of government here isn't to throw a grenade into the system and hope for the best. It's to keep supply stable while gradually bringing costs down, which is why we've been focused on fuel security—making sure supply is there, especially in regional areas. It's why we've worked with regulators to monitor prices and crack down on dodgy behaviour. And it's why we're investing heavily in renewables—not because it sounds nice, but because, over time, it's one of the only ways to structurally lower energy costs. We're already seeing early signs of that, with the electricity prices forecast to ease, even while global fuel costs are rising. This hasn't happened by accident. It has happened because we are trying to manage the system carefully, not just chasing a headline.

And of course I get why people are frustrated. When you see large companies making record profits, it's completely reasonable to ask whether Australians are getting a fair return. That's exactly why we've tightened tax settings, increased compliance and gone after multinationals trying to minimise what they pay. That way, there's no free pass here.

But fairness also means being honest about trade-offs, because if the goal is to make life more affordable and not just to feel like we're doing something, then we have to be careful not to create policies that backfire. That's the difference in the approach here. We're not pretending that there's a one-line fix to the cost of living. There isn't. What we're doing is steadily pulling the levers that genuinely make a difference, making sure that companies pay more tax, using that revenue to support households, stabilising energy supply and investing in cheaper energy over time. These aren't flashy, headline-grabbing tactics but something real to work with—and, right now, with everything people are dealing with, 'real' probably matters more than anything else.

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

Tasmanians know that I have been advocating hard for a 25 per cent gas export tax on gas companies. I strongly welcome the news that the Prime Minister's department is costing this policy. It's finally realising that it could fix our government debt whilst providing better services and cost-of-living relief.

It's outrageous that we raise more from the tax on beer than we do from the multinational corporations exporting our sovereign resources. We should be taxing our gas exports to fund our sovereign wealth fund, our healthcare, our education and our housing. But we could also easily expand this 25 per cent tax, making it much higher during times of conflict when the oil price skyrockets and the oil companies earn superprofits from it. It is fundamentally unfair that multinational corporations are pocketing record profits from the current conflict in the Middle East while regular Australians struggle to fill their tanks.

The government should implement a time-limited tax on the windfall profits of oil and gas exporters, with every dollar raised to be used to make fuel cheaper by reducing the fuel excise. That is a real, budget-neutral solution to the current fuel crisis. That's cheaper fuel for Australians, funded by un-ordinary windfall profits of multinational gas companies.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's gas industry is export dominant, highly lucrative and globally significant. Around 80 per cent of our gas is exported; 20 percent is used domestically. We are always in the top three as a global gas producer, usually after the US and Qatar. It is a highly lucrative industry. In 2023-24 gas exports raised around $70 billion in revenue. They paid around $1.5 billion in PRRT. They paid around $10 billion in company tax. Royalties to the states were in the order of around $2 billion. We introduced some reforms to PRRT to claw back more tax, and the number of companies that will be paying PRRT will increase, from 11 to 16, as a result of those reforms in our first term of government.

But 2023-24 is very different to 2026. What has happened in the aftermath of the Middle East conflict is that gas prices have spiked. The European benchmark for gas jumped to its highest level in more than three years only a few days ago. On 19 March, about a week ago, the Financial Review reported that Woodside and Santos had recently sold their gas cargoes at more than double the Asian benchmark rate. In other words, the gas companies are raking it in as a result of this conflict.

So far, Australian domestic gas prices have been relatively stable. That's thanks to ample supply in the system due to all the reforms we brought in during our first term, which were actually opposed by those opposite. There are genuine and legitimate concerns, particularly from industry, which relies on gas, that these prices may not remain low and stable for long. In fact, energy forecasters are predicting that, by winter of this year, gas prices domestically will jump. I'm a senator for Victoria. Victorians, particularly Victorian households, rely on gas for cooking and heating. In fact, around 90 per cent of Victorian households use gas. So, coming into winter, I will be very concerned if gas companies seek to profit from this conflict and hike domestic prices. I'll be watching closely. I would hazard a guess that they haven't done it already, because they know we are all watching them closely as well.

This is why we will be introducing a domestic gas reservation policy. This will start in 2027. It will mean that around 15 to 25 per cent of gas produced here in Australia will be retained here in Australia in order to put downward pressure on prices, in order to bake in some energy resilience in an increasingly volatile world and in order to protect our domestic industries. Indeed, the Australian Workers' Union, representing manufacturing workers, has said that this was an historic victory. I want to reassure our trading partners that it will not be applied retrospectively.

However, I do agree with the Greens political party that we need to go further. I think that Australian gas producers have been operating in fairly generous circumstances for some time. Yes, they create jobs. Yes, they create revenue. Yes, they create value. There's no disputing that. But it's an extractive industry and one that, in the current circumstances, is going to become even more lucrative as time goes on. Why? It's because of the strike to the Qatar LNG facility, which is likely to lead to years of elevated prices because it will take years for that facility to come online again.

It's no secret that Treasury are looking at an additional tax or levy. Sure enough, as night follows day, the usual suspects—the gas industry and their cheer squad—are saying that this will freeze investment and disincentivise investment. I don't believe them, because circumstances have changed. Qatar is now seen as a geopolitical risk. How can it not be? Australia, on the other hand, is a safe haven thanks to our democratic nation and skill capability. We are on the doorstep of— (Time expired)

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The gas companies have been ripping us off for years—not just in the last three weeks that this conflict has been underway; they have been ripping off Australians for years. And it's just gotten a whole lot worse, now that we see them making blood money off this terrible war—profiteering from the conflict, price gouging and doing whatever they can to make massive profits while everybody else suffers.

Gas companies pay less tax than most Australians. They pay less than nurses. Nurses pay more tax than the gas companies—there's nothing fair about that. Teachers pay double in tax what gas companies do. Students with their HECS debts pay more than the gas companies do. Heavens above! Every time you go to the pub and buy a beer, you pay more tax than the gas companies do. It is an absolute rort. Australians are feeling the pressure more than ever because of this bloody war from President Trump, who is doing this for his own ego and for his own power. He's in cahoots with the fossil fuel companies. They think it's great because they're making massive profits—blood money at the expense of everybody else.

This terrible war is pushing up the prices of everyday things and making life even harder for Australians. It makes us less safe, and it makes it harder to make ends meet. It is just appalling that, when people are suffering, the gas companies are profiteering off this bloody, tragic war.

Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of Senator McKim's motion regarding a 25 per cent tax on the gas companies who are making eye-watering profits in the wake of the illegal war in the Middle East. Despite the billions of dollars in profits from our resources, they're not paying Australians our fair share. In fact, many now know gas companies pay less tax on gas than Australians do on beer. That tells you everything about how broken our system is. As soon as sensible reform is proposed, these companies move quickly to protect their profits because they serve shareholders, not the Australian public. In my home state of WA, fuel prices are soaring, and families are paying up to $2.80 a litre.

If a 25 per cent gas export tax had been introduced in 2022, Australia could have raised $63.8 billion. That's enough money to make early childhood education free and remove the HECS debt on students. Other countries like Norway tax their resources properly and invest in their people. Here, we subsidise fossil fuel giants and send students the bill. That's cooked policy! We must shift the burden from everyday Australians to those profiting from our resources and demand that they invest in our country.

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

In any war, it is ordinary people who always pay the price. Already, thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, while Trump threatens to obliterate Iran and Israel's violence marches on in Lebanon, Palestine and Syria.

People here were already struggling, and now their lives are getting even harder because this prime minister dragged us into a war that no-one wants, except warmongers Trump and Netanyahu and weapons, oil and gas barons, who are raking in profits, dripping in blood. Not only is this a moral failing that exposes the rot of the imperial war machine; it has destabilised the entire economy. While people pay more for everything—for fuel, for food, for rent and for mortgages—corporations make record profits. These corporations make a motza from the killing of innocent people in war, but they also make massive profits from the killing of the environment, our planet and our climate. They make a profit from ecocide and omnicide at the same time. What we need at the end of the day is to break the system that is rigged for the rich, that is rigged for the billionaires and that is rigged for the warmongers.

We can start today. We can start today by imposing a gas export levy of at least 25 per cent on the companies that profit from human misery, and then we can use this revenue to support Australians, who are being smashed left, right and centre by the cost-of-living crisis.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is one of the biggest gas exporters in the world, but, when LNG prices go up globally, Aussies don't feel richer. We don't get a huge amount more in return, unlike Norway, who have a 78 per cent tax on their oil and gas. They also now have a $3 trillion sovereign wealth fund. Australians have figured this out now and are fired up and are angry with the major parties that continue to defend this arrangement and continue to give us the talking points from the gas industry about why we couldn't possibly get our fair share from the gas industry. The questions I get the most are: Why 25 per cent? Why not 78 per cent? This proposal, which I support, is a 25 per cent tax on gas export revenue. It means that the gas companies can no longer use the profit shifting and all the fancy accounting that means many of them have not paid much corporate tax at all, so a flat 25 per cent tax on gas exports is clearly the way to go now.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right now, Australians are paying for Trump and Netanyahu's warmongering. We're watching another US forever war spread pain and violence across the Middle East, and, every day, civilians are dying because of bullies like Trump. This is being cheered on by the war parties in this place—One Nation and their mates in the Labor and Liberal parties—who now expect us to believe their crocodile tears about the economic pain caused by their mate's war. The Australian public doesn't want this war. They don't want the government to support it and they don't want Australian troops involved, but the war parties have done all these things. When big corporations—their donors who fly them around in their corporate jets or fund their election campaigns—start profiting from the war and the Greens start saying, 'Make them pay some tax,' we get the talking points from the gas giants. That's what we get in this place.

The war parties are probably thrilled to see their donors—the Gina Rineharts and others, the oil, gas and minerals industries, the arms industry—raking it in right now. Let's be clear, a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports at this time will go some way to clawing back to the public some of the obscene profits that these fossil fuel corporations are leeching from us under the cover of war. We could use the money to help pay people's energy bills, to fund public transport and to help with real costs while people are struggling with their mate Donald Trump's and Netanyahu's war of choice.

The war in the Middle East should never have started. The Albanese Labor government should never have supported it. Australia must withdraw all support right now. But, even then, regular people will still be paying the cost of that war, and that's also what this tax is about—taking power away from big corporations and bullies and putting it back in the hands of people. If we had a lot more of that in this place, if we'd stuck to those principles, we wouldn't be part of this bloody war now.

Sean Bell (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

(—) (): Australians deserve a fair share for our gas. One Nation has fought for this for nearly a decade, whereas the Greens, right now, what they have proven with their stunts and their half-baked policies—they are here to destroy the gas industry. That is their intention. One Nation has sensible policies. We've led the fight for a fair share for a decade. Under the Greens and what they're proposing, Australians will get nothing, because 25 per cent of nothing is nothing. One Nation has put forward sensible policies that will see 15 per cent of our gas reserved for Australian homes and businesses first. One Nation has talked about necessary reforms to the petroleum rent resource tax. One Nation is happy to look at taking equity stakes and resource projects like we've saw in Norway, but that's not what we are hearing from the Greens or teals. We can have cheap, affordable energy. We can have a fair return for Australians and fair ownership of our resources, but you don't get it by destroying the gas industry. You don't get it by wiping it out. You don't get it by pandering to your billionaire mates in the renewable industry who are there to destroy an industry. That's why One Nation is here to back our—

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Bell. Senator Steele-John.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The community have the very reasonable expectation that the people they elect will go to work for them, yet for decades Labor and the Liberal Party have shown up to work and gone to work for the gas industry—for Chevron, for Santos, for Woodside. They have written and rewritten tax laws which now allow the absurdity that a nurse working a double shift at Royal Perth in Western Australia pays more tax than Woodside. This must end. These corporations must be made to pay their fair share so that our community can receive the cost-of-living relief that in this moment it so desperately needs.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the discussion has expired.