Prime minister’s office requests modelling for gas and coal tax to shield Australia from impact of war
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-20/government-explores-new-tax-for-gas-coal-to-buffer-fuel-costs/106475100?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other
26 Comments
Are we finally going to do it?!
>Last week, Labor, the Coalition and One Nation teamed up in the Senate to vote down a Greens amendment calling for a levy on gas companies’ windfall profits.
So like the price gouging proposals they now seem surprised is happening.. and every other decent idea the Greens suggest but Labor rejects just because they default to defending whatever the shitty status quo is.
Oh and fuel efficiency improvements that would have meant a more efficient vehicle fleet instead of more giant utes pissing out pollution getting shitty mileage. Or replacing as much of the fleet with EVs as possible..
Naah, gotta just defend the status quo and then throw up their hands and go “whatever could we have done to prevent this?”
Why didn’t they ask for this modelling when it all kicked off?
Do it! Those resources belong to us, not the companies
What modelling do you need? Number go up.
That’s fine for this war. But what about the next? And the next?
Have we learnt nothing from both Covid and Trump.
We need on shore self sufficiency. For all vital industries.
Able to be ramped up and down as needed.
Free trade is dead. All hail Fair trade!
This war won’t end it will only spread. Iran won’t stop and neither will Israel.
Labor is spineless and craven. It’ll use ‘modelling’ to argue downside and ‘risk’ .. to ‘win, or try to not lose’ votes.. all while performing felatio the gas and fossil corporates.
We are entitled to expect bad things from this administration.
They’ll spend millions on an AI report that concludes” we should tax the sheeple more instead”
Honestly though, if Albo does this, I forgive him for all other fuck ups
They’ll do it…. so that the next time this happens we will benefit, not enough time with consultation and blah blah blah.
But then if it happens again, they’ll have some other way to shift tax around and pay no extra.
Fucking yes! Let’s do this. We won’t get another chance. It’s time for Albo to lead us.
ABOUT TIME
Lobbyists booking some nice restaurants and inviting their politician friends right now.
Through sheer dumb luck we manage to hit another gas price increase in which we can tax them.
We let the mining boom squander, we let the Russian Ukraine war gas price boom squander surely we can’t do it a 3rd time?
Fucking just lower the income tax and index it if they’re so scared of backlash.
Finally. Get the fuck on with it and make it permanent, not a bandaid for when things go wrong overseas.
We’re one of the richest countries in terms of resources and we’ve squandered that for decades. What we could have been…
They should also do a modeling on the additional revenues they could get if they were to properly tax (largely foreign) corporations who shift their profits offshore. Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Adani etc etc.. that income, on top of a reasonable resource tax, and Australians would fare pretty well. We might even have dental in Medicare and free universities! Imagine that.
This guy is a soft cock he won’t do shit.
This entire comment section reads like a Russian bot farm, particularly the commentary from the OP.
The contortionist acts being performed to produce the anti-Labor narrative – who needs modelling, they probably won’t do it anyway, they’ll just use AI, they’ll probably just do what their donors want, it’s too late, it’s not enough, why didn’t they do it yesterday – is particularly desperate.
Instead of a short-sighted reactionary policy, they should be looking at a industry-wide carbon tax that pays dividends to Australians who are struggling with cost of living. It would raise revenue for the government, put fossil fuel industry on level playing field with renewables by pricing externalities, and nudge Australia towards building up our renewable/green exports economy which could become huge as the rest of the world decarbonises.
And the modelling has already been done: [https://www.superpowerinstitute.com.au/work/the-case-for-pricing-pollution](https://www.superpowerinstitute.com.au/work/the-case-for-pricing-pollution)
How about instead of messing with prices and taxes, for once you just work on permanently increasing supply?
Were they embarassed by the comparisons to beer tax?
Then like the temporary war time tax that is income tax we never get rid of it! COME ON BBY
How about they lower the regulated rate for residential customers??? (business and commercial write off utilities as overheads for tax purposes).
While the gov doesn’t regulate the billable rates applied THEY DO regulate the MAX rate that could be applied. Each retailer chooses rates under this cap to offer to customers.
LOWER THE DAMN CAP!!!
Shuffle around on this with focus groups, investigations, considerations… but push through privacy breaching bullshit laws and blocks on online gaming and adult websites quietly without asking anyone.
Long overdue considering how much we get gouged on our own resources.
The tax is required to ensure that Australians get their fair share from the resources that we own. The last windfall extraction tax, the Mining Super Profits Tax, was killed by lobbying and a well funded PR campaign. If another is proposed, hopefully it plays differently the second time around.
Australia should be following the Nordic model and not the neoliberal one the US and UK have chosen and are much further down the road on. As we can see from four decades of neoliberal nonsense, the US and UK have people dying for want of healthcare and very severe poverty for children and the aged. The Nordic countries, for all their faults, don’t have problems of the same scale. Australians need to ask themselves, do we want a country that serves the interests of its people, or the interests of foreign owned corporations?