Labor under internal pressure on gas tax as influencer says government ‘stopped working for the punters’
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/apr/21/labor-under-internal-pressure-on-gas-tax-as-influencer-says-government-stopped-working-for-the-punters
25 Comments
This is what the people want screw woodside
Love punters politics and David Pocock for bringing this into the limelight. It’s nice to have a politician that seems to genuinely care about Australians
People finally realising the big companies call us treasure island? This needed to be done over a decade ago
They keep talking about if we tax it countries will stop buying it. Ok. Let them not buy it. We still make the same revenue if they don’ t (none). If they don’t buy it we keep the resources for ourselves. It’s not our economy that’ll really suffer. Just sell the stuff at market value, the tax can be built in. It’s Australia’s asset not the world’s.
On that hysterical threat that these fossil fuel companies will “take their business elsewhere” I like Ken Henry’s point he made yesterday:
I’d prefer the people of Australia got 25% of 80% of this business than fuckall of 100% of this business
Call their bluff – because we know that’s all it is.
Take their business elsewhere? Like Qatar?? Brother, no one can rely on gulf states if the strait can be opened and closed on the whims of a dementia patient.
Countries will be wanting to diversify their gas suppliers and will look at the next cheapest option (Australia). We should be enforcing an export tax, foreign energy companies profit margins be dammed.
Can we afford not to?
Where else are the billions of dollars that we need for the NDIS and Health Care in the coming decade with the increasingly older population to come from? This also ignores the promises that we have made around every other aspect of society (and forgets the unwater boats we have promised to buy for $400B).
The resources are ours, why are we the only idiots on the planet that give them away? If Norway and Qatar tax them and still have corporations investing and making money then we can and must do it here!
I think it will be hard at the moment as I think it was part of the deal with Singapore and Japan for us to get oil we will keep gas cheap for them
Price it to include the environmental damage it does too, maybe some of it could even stay in the fucking ground instead of boiling our planet
Norway heard the same arguement and those companies still paid the tax
Aussie politicians are corrupt. Vote the lot of them out and keep voting them out until we get what we want.
There’s an ABC series on iView called If You’re Listening, and the most recent episode was on this topic. I knew we were being rorted, but watching it made me legitimately angry. Just government after government desperate to flog our natural resources away at the lowest price for decades while Australians have to pay a much higher market price for our own commodities. Selling ourselves out for almost nothing.
Australia is a banana Republic without the fun of nationalising energy resources. Just this morning I was reading a finance sub where there was a great deal of hand wringing over the idea that businesses generating billions in profit (not revenue) from the extraction of non-renewable sovereign resources are going to completely collapse if this tax goes through. Absolute fantasy. Gas extraction and export is one of the most low risk and high profit industries in Australia. And even if taxes like this have the ability to collapse their business model, there is little risk to the average Australian. The nature of these industries makes capital flight virtually impossible, and even if there is, they are easily nationalised.
The gas industry already pays its fair share of tax, supports energy security and provides well paying jobs. Quick, we better tax it into the ground so we can waste more on the NDIS!
Punterspolitics is a great advocate for what a lot of ordinary Australians are thinking
Australia literally exists to extract money from punters, that’s why they’re the biggest gambling losers on the planet. You guys should probably start saving up a fund from all the stolen fossil fuel resources you sell, not only will you need to cover the cost of the damage that climate change has done around the world because of your greed, but also the process of giving the land back to the original owners might be expensive.
Call these companies bluff. It’s always the same “if taxes raise then the rich will run away!!!!!” Never happens
I find calling this guy an influencer rather than a journalist is rude / misleading.
Guy research’s the hell out of subjects then provides this information in a novel interesting way.
He’s not out there taking photos of his latest purchase at a restaurant.
So let me get this straight:
there’s agreed contract terms between 2 parties to sell/buy a good.
Seller wanted low risk & longevity of purchase (low return) & the purchaser wanted to invest into storage/educated advisors focusing on overall market timing to manage the product more nuanced.
And now the seller wants to change the terms mid way through?
Just use the gas to power turbine generators nationwide, bring the cost of energy down. Dismantling private utilities sector to nationalise the entire energy sector and reinvestment into infrastructure.
Doing at better job at being a journalist, than our journalists do is called ‘influencing’ now?
Fuck me. Almost all the journos these days are basically just puppets to some politically linked think tank/big business that just spew out what their master tells them to and label it as ‘news’.
It’s funny how this whole article written this entire article as if it’s a party issue. It’s all “labor” and “The Albanese government”. It’s very clear why it’s written this way and it’s so dumb that it’ll actually work on some people.
Parties of landlords working for themselves and corporations. Fuck them all.
Last time Albanese was asked about taxing resources companies he dismissed it as a crazy idea from the greens. When he was told it was actually David Pocock’s idea, he said “I think David Pocock is someone who seeks to promote grievance as well.”
https://region.com.au/pm-plays-the-man-with-grievance-jibe-says-pocock/945551/
So don’t get your hopes up, not while the major parties take donations from resource companies. I could only see this happening if Labor had to form a minority government and negotiate with the crossbench
Thank you to the Greens for leading this senate inquiry
So stupid we have to rely on this legend to get our own government to do their fucking job