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

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the division of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Accountability and Fairness) Bill 2023, as circulated.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in my name, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended that would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to the division of a bill.

As all of us in this place know, Australians are getting totally dudded when it comes to the export of our gas. We're a gas powerhouse, exporting 75 per cent of the gas that we produce. In 2022 export revenue for LNG was close to $93 billion. That's more than double the federal government education budget for the same period. Yet not a single cent of petroleum resource rent tax was collected. Four major foreign gas producers—Exxon, Shell, INPEX and Chevron—have not paid a single cent of petroleum resource rent tax on the combined income of the nearly $300 billion that they've received from exporting our gas over the nine years to 2021-22.

The cost of this failure in our tax system is huge. Every dollar of tax avoided by the gas industry is a dollar not available to fund our understaffed and underpaid frontline services. It's a dollar that we can't put into having more GPs for Australians to access through Medicare. It's a dollar that doesn't go to nurses and teachers. Every dollar of tax avoided is a dollar not available to invest in decarbonising the economy with the urgency that is required. Every dollar of tax avoided is a dollar not available to adapt our homes, our food systems and our ecosystems, in a budget that had nothing for nature—absolutely nothing for the places that Australians love and want to see protected. We're told that the budget is tight and that we can't afford to look after the environment, yet we're willing to let these multinationals export our gas for free. It makes no sense, and I think most Australians would ask: What are our politicians doing about it? How do they change this? And then they find out that we've got this petroleum resource rent tax bill before the Senate. They think, 'Maybe that could get us more tax, as we've seen other countries do.'

Qatar exports about the same amount of gas as we do but collects 20 times more tax on gas than Australia. Norway has a taxation rate on gas of 78 per cent, nearly double the petroleum resource rent tax. The result is that they're now sitting on a sovereign wealth fund of $2.4 trillion. In 2023 the fund made a profit of $320 billion. We could be doing that for our resources; we could be getting a fair return for them. But we've got the major parties and now the Greens stitching up a deal to just move on with things: 'We don't care.'

The 90 per cent cap in the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Accountability and Fairness) Bill does not even bring in additional revenue. It just brings forward payments that would have happened anyway. And it will bring forward only around $500 million a year. In 2022 that would have been around half a percent of the revenue earned on Australian gas. That seems really pitiful to me. That seems inadequate. I'm certainly hearing from the people I represent in the ACT that they want a better deal. We have huge challenges in front of us as a country, and this is revenue we could put to work to make Australians' lives better and set us up for the future.

PRRT receipts since the policy was announced have been revised down by $500 million. So you basically wipe out these really weak changes that are being proposed by the government. We in this place should have a duty of care for young people and future generations. We should be making decisions that are good for young people and future generations. And this change to the petroleum resource rent tax bill is not that. It doesn't uphold that duty to ensure that we are benefiting young people from our resources and from the burning of gas that we know will saddle them with many challenges through their lifetime.