2026-04-23
It’s time we tax our gas exports
By Senator Steph Hodgins-May
We’ve been getting ripped off by big gas corporations.
Giant companies, names like Santos, Woodside and Shell, aren’t just causing irreversible damage across the country; they’re making billions doing it.
And those billions aren’t flowing back into the Australian economy. They’re lining the already overflowing pockets of gas giants.
In fact, on more than half the gas exported from Australia, these corporations don’t pay a single cent of tax.
Now, the US and Israel’s illegal attacks on Iran, and the disruption to global supply chains, mean these multibillion dollar companies are making even bigger profits.
And the government is keen to help them, having just given them a $300 billion gift in the form of a 30 year extension on the Gorgon gas project.
Right now, we’re in the middle of a parliamentary inquiry into how gas exports are taxed.
We’ve worked hard to bring this issue into the national conversation, and more NGOs, influencers and crossbenchers are backing our call for a minimum 25% tax on gas exports.
The current tax system was written by the gas industry. That’s not hyperbole. The Labor government, no doubt entirely uninfluenced by the hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations it receives from gas corporations, publicly boasted about bringing them to the table while drafting the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT). The result was a model designed with loopholes, and gas corporations have been all too happy to exploit them to avoid paying what they owe to the Australian public.
These carveouts are so significant that Japan makes more off Australian tax than Australia does. Their import tax gives them billions of dollars that they can spend on high quality infrastructure, but that we just let go to line the pockets of these corporations and give them more money to undermine our political system with.
Our inquiry will force these corporations to answer questions about the scale of their profits and the extent of their efforts to avoid paying tax in Australia.
Modelling by the Australia Institute shows that a 25% tax on exports would raise an extra $17 billion a year.
That’s $17 billion that could go towards real cost of living relief for families doing it tough.
And it’s $17 billion that could fund the transition away from fossil fuels, helping secure a clean, renewable future that not only protects our climate, but also strengthens energy security so Australia is less exposed to global supply shocks during a cost of living crisis.
By the time this Green Magazine reaches members, the hearings will have taken place.
We will have asked tough questions, and either we’ll have answers to guide policymaking in next month’s budget, or we’ll have silence that speaks volumes.
Unfortunately, the CEOs didn’t think it was worth their time to show up. Apparently, fundraising dinners and closed door meetings with politicians are worth rearranging their diaries for, but appearing before a parliamentary inquiry is not.
It raises a simple question: what are they so worried about? Is it that the economic contributions they boast about don’t stand up to scrutiny? Or that the highly paid defenders of the gas industry would fold under the questioning they knew was coming?
Next comes the budget.
You’ve helped us build real pressure on the Labor government to stop ignoring the fact that billionaires are ripping Australians off, with their help. That pressure is starting to bite. There are reports of growing concern within Labor, with MPs worried about losing support over the government’s inaction.
That’s what we need to keep building. We need to keep the pressure on and make it clear the government has nowhere to hide.
As former treasury secretary Dr Ken Henry put it when he spoke to the inquiry this week: Cut the crap. Just do it.
Australians know they’re being taken for a ride by an industry that is happy to make billions destroying the environment, while contributing next to nothing to the country it profits from.