Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We hear objections immediately; it feels like we maybe touched a nerve again. Firstly, they let gas corporations get away with paying next to no tax. On income tax, Santos pays less income tax than anyone watching this at home. We also know that Santos last year wrote to the Labor resource minister asking for changes to environmental approvals to allow them to accelerate the approval of the Barossa gas project, and then Labor did just that, overriding the wishes of First Nations people and serious environmental concerns. Any other constituent in Australia would love the idea that they could write to the minister and then immediately get what they want. What about all the people on JobSeeker writing to the minister, asking to have their payments raised above the poverty line, or the people stuck on waiting lists or the renters out there? They get ignored. But, if you're the CEO of Santos, you get exactly what you want.

We also know that this new gas strategy is something of which every Labor member in this place should be deeply, deeply ashamed. I frankly do not know how anyone on that side of the House can sleep at night. Expanding gas production out past 2050 basically locks in catastrophic climate change. One of the lies that are perpetrated in this place, or these mistruths, is that Australia only has a small part to play when tackling climate change. Australia is one of the biggest exporters of fossil fuels in the world. In fact, the two countries that beat us are Saudi Arabia and Russia, which are hardly wonderful company to have.

So let's get this straight. The Labor Party is now going to spend public money expanding gas production out past 2050—gas production, by the way, that produces methane that is 80 times more potent in warming the planet than CO2. They let gas corporations get away with paying next to no tax. They're going to give them public money to do it. They roll over when the Labor resource minister gets written to by the CEO of Santos. It's incredible.

On taxes, by the way, we're about to have a federal budget, so let's talk about taxes for a second. Over a seven-year period, Santos made $28.9 billion in income. They paid an effective tax rate on that of 0.02 per cent. Eighty-two per cent of all the gas produced in Australia is exported overseas. So, really, what's remarkable about this—what is so destructive—is that they are pursuing a gas strategy that allows large multinational corporations, like Santos, Chevron and Woodside, to export enormous amounts of gas overseas, pay no tax on it, destroy the planet and hurt everyone other than the CEOs of Santos and Woodside. That's who the Labor Party is picking.

Let's think about Norway for a second. Some members of this place will say, 'It's very hard to tax gas corporations.' Norway manages it. In 2023, there was $209 billion earned in the Norwegian gas industry. They paid an effective tax rate of 63 per cent. In Australia, in the same year, gas corporations made $164 billion of revenue but only paid tax on that, plus royalties, at a rate of nine per cent. If those gas corporations in Australia paid the same tax rate as they did in Norway, in a single year the Australian government would have earned an extra $88.8 billion in revenue. That would fund putting dental into Medicare and completely solve the housing crisis by funding a mass construction of public housing. We could coordinate a freeze on rent increases. We could make university education free. We could wipe student debt. We could raise the poverty payments that the government forces people to live on, like JobSeeker, above the poverty line. We could do all of that. We could fundamentally improve people's lives and we could fund a transition plan out of coal and gas in the medium term.

Instead, this government is raising more money from student debt than they are from gas taxes, expanding gas production out past 2050 and approving coalmines that will be mining coal out to 2070—and expecting Australians to put up with it. Functionally what the Labor Party is doing in this place is acting as the political representative of Woodside, Santos and the entire gas industry. They're attempting to pull the wool over ordinary people's eyes by suggesting that somehow they care about other Australians out there.

But let's look at the evidence. There are record low taxes for gas corporations, which see Santos pay a lower percentage tax rate than a cleaner, a teacher or a nurse; they all pay a higher percentage tax rate than Santos does. There's public money to help Santos and Woodside do what they want to do—expand gas production and destroy the planet. At the end of all of this, what do we get? The world's scientists have said that warming is going to expand past 1½ degrees, and God only knows what's going to happen as warming surges past 2½ degrees and three degrees. And many members of this place won't have to be here to suffer the consequences. (Time expired)

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