Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, you did do that, but you still kept it at a very generous five per cent, Senator Canavan, including for uplift on operating expenses, which was entirely unnecessary. Why should you transfer the risky activities of these companies onto the Australian taxpayer or onto the Australian public? I asked Dr Emerson this point, and he said, 'You could change it, Senator, but it would introduce sovereign risk'—the old sovereign risk bogey again, as though that's somehow going to influence future investment in this country. We're talking about trillions of dollars of investment already, and the reason we're getting this investment is this overly generous tax system.

Now, I don't want to see Equinor, a Norwegian company, going out and exploring the pristine Great Australian Bight. If they find world-class reserves of oil and gas there, they're going to turn South Australia into another North West Shelf. Apart from the endless pursuit of profits that this industry is addicted to, they are doing that because of this tax system. This generous tax system allows them to write-off all those exploration expenses, uplift them at generous rates and use them against future profits. Those liabilities will never be paid to the Australian people.

I don't want to see a pristine body of water turned into another giant oil and gas field. It's a time of climate crisis. It's a time in history to be changing the way we do business. It's a time to stand up and say, 'Business as usual is not an option,' whether it's dealing with our tax system and changing the tax system the way we need to, whether it's pricing pollution, whether it's transitioning our economy to renewable energy, whether it's standing up and opposing all new offshore oil and gas exploration in this country or whether it's looking after future generations by acting on emissions and sending the strongest possible signal to these companies that their business model is defunct.

In a future of acting on climate there will be no more room for multi-trillion dollar oil and gas wells and developments off our coasts. It's high time we moved on. It's high time we act on emissions and we make the leadership decisions in this chamber and the other place to rapidly transition this country. This is why people are protesting. This is why people are rising in Melbourne, in Brisbane, in Sydney, in Perth, in Hobart, in Launceston and in Adelaide. They're standing up because we aren't making those decisions. We aren't showing the leadership on transition. I would have thought that the PRRT was a no-brainer—making changes to a tax system that at least forces some of the biggest, wealthiest companies on this planet to pay their fair share. They've got out of paying $324 billion in tax to the Australian people. Think about that just for a moment. Think about how much money that is and what that could be used for. This is a small first step—not giving these companies more deductions.

I would urge senators to consider that—indeed, and this was thoroughly explored by our Senate inquiry and you might want to pay particular attention to this one, Senator Canavan—this is the tail wagging the dog of the oil and gas industry in this country and it is deliberately designed to be so generous to entice and to incentivise companies to come in their endless exploration of dirty fossil fuels that they burn that pollute the planet, that warm the planet, that kill our oceans, that cause bushfires and that condemns future generations of Australians. It's all tied in to this tax system. We need to change it. I am very passionate about this issue, and I will continue to fight, with my colleagues, to change this tax system to fix this petroleum resource rort in Australia.