Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

One day our children and grandchildren will look back at how we have taxed fossil fuel companies in Australia and see it as the complete joke that it is. Our main fossil fuel tax collects $88 per person per year. In Norway the fossil fuel tax collects $16,500 per citizen per year. Australia collects more from its beer excise than it does from its fossil fuel taxes. We spend way more on subsidies to coal and gas companies than we collect from the PRRT, our main fossil fuel tax.

Australian taxpayers are now subsidising fossil fuel companies to the tune of $14.5 billion every year; that's an increase of 31 per cent even just from last year. As taxpayers we help multinational fossil fuel companies more than they help us. This is happening while those companies are making record profits from our country's natural resources. Petroleum revenue has grown in real terms from $10 billion in 1990 to $49 billion today. But our fossil fuel intake has more than halved in real terms. According to last night's budget, last year we made $1.1 billion from our PRRT. The gas industry used to pay more than a third of its income in tax and in royalties. It's now one-fifteenth of that income.

All the while, climate change is accelerating. April 2024 was the hottest April on record. March 2024 was the hottest March on record. So too was February 2024. In fact, for the last 11 months every single month has been the hottest on record ever. Climate scientists tell us that opening new fossil fuel projects is disastrous. Eighty per cent believe that we will not escape global warming beyond three degrees.

We should be leading the world in our investment in solar farms and in wind farms, but instead this government is approving new coal projects and new gas fields. This government is listening more to coal and fuel lobbyists than to climate scientists, and we are failing our future generations because of that. It is a national embarrassment. It reflects a short-sightedness that would devastate our country, and it is an issue that we have to address as a matter of urgency.

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