Offshore gas companies are fleecing Australian taxpayers, making massive profits while paying practically nothing under the government’s Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT).
The Greens have proposed changes that would raise $24 billion over the next four years by fixing the scheme, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimates. Last year’s tax data shows that there were 27 gas companies that earned $77 billion in revenue between them without paying any tax at all, The Greens’ analysis shows.
The PRRT was designed to impose higher taxes on mining companies that profit simply from digging up highly profitable resources out of the ground. But the scheme allows them to deduct everything they have spent developing the project from the tax they owe.
Some of these costs in exploration and investment occur many years before a project is in production. Until 2019, deductions accumulated in previous years were allowed to grow at the long term bond rate, currently 3 per cent, plus 15 per cent a year!
As a result gas companies now have $282 billion in deductions that they can use to avoid paying tax under the scheme. This means many will never pay anything. Instead of cancelling these accumulated deductions, the government in 2019 simply reduced their rate of growth in future years.
Chevron, which owns almost half of the Gorgon gas project, 64 per cent of the Wheatstone project and 16.7 per cent of the North-West Shelf, had $15 billion in revenue last year but paid no tax. ExxonMobil paid nothing on $15.5 billion in revenue.
Christensen rorts taxpayers to fund retirement
George Christensen has jumped ship from the Liberal National Party to One Nation, announcing he will join an unwinnable position on their Senate ticket after deciding not to stand again in the Queensland seat of Dawson.
The move will see him collect an extra parliamentary “resettlement allowance” of $105,000. The deal will help One Nation too, with any extra votes he pulls increasing their election funding.
Christensen has been a prominent promoter of COVID conspiracy theories and called for parents not to vaccinate their children. Last year he appeared on notorious far right conspiracist Alex Jones’ Infowars show.
Fossil fuel subsidies still growing
Fossil fuel subsidies cost government $11.6 billion last year, a study by the Australian Institute has revealed.
They increased 12 per cent in the last year, with the federal government pouring in another $6.7 billion in subsidies since the 2019 election. Even as floods and climate disasters sweep the country, the total amount committed over the next four years between state and federal governments is $55.3 billion, or 11 times the balance of Australia’s Emergency Response Fund.
Liberals stuff the AAT with party mates
The jobs come with massive salaries attached. Former NSW Liberal Minister Pru Goward and former Chief of Staff to Scott Morrison, Ann Duttfield, scored roles that pay $333,000 a year full-time for up to seven years. Two former Liberal MPs in the WA parliament who lost their seats in March were also gifted jobs.
The Coalition have again stacked the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) with Liberal appointees on the eve of an election.
There were six Liberals among the 19 appointments made. Antoinette Younes, former adviser to the Minister who made the appointments, Michaelia Cash, was elevated to an AAT deputy president job paying $496,000.
She at least has a law degree, but former Liberal candidate Denis Dragovic, who got the same position, has no legal qualifications whatsoever.
The AAT reviews government decisions in areas such as immigration visas, NDIS packages, social security and Freedom of Information applications.
Labor claims that 85 of those appointed to the AAT since 2013 have links to the Liberal or National parties.
Things they say
Labor’s historic task is to move more people into the middle-class, to appeal to small business and if we don’t do that Labor won’t be successful.
Anthony Albanese, who clearly doesn’t have much grasp of Labor’s history or the fact that it’s supposed to be a working class party
I would say there is no-one in the Parliament who has closer credentials and more friends in senior members of the business community than myself on either side of politics.
Albanese may be delusional, but at least he knows who’s side he’s on
The more coal and gas we produce, the harder things will be for Putin.
Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan sees war as a marketing opportunity for fossil fuels
Matt Canavan is becoming like that Japanese intelligence officer, Onoda, who refused to accept that WWII was over and hid in the jungle for 30 years
Nationals MP Darren Chester, on Canavan’s boast that the Coalition’s 2050 net zero climate target was dead because of the Ukraine war
This is why the disability community quite often struggles to make constructive gains is because there is lying underneath it a significant, almost permanent rage machine
Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes on the response to Morrison’s comment that he was “blessed” not to have disabled children
She’s standing for something really important
Scott Morrison on Katherine Deves’ bigoted campaign against trans women in sport
I cannot be clearer than this: If people attempt to come to Australia by boat, they will not make it. Their boats will be turned back or they will be sent to Nauru
Kristina Keneally on how a Labor government would handle refugees
