STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator ALLMAN-PAYNE (Queensland) (13:47): Australians are struggling because Labor, the LNP and One Nation care more about pandering to their gas donors and their billionaire backers than about teachers and parents who are raising our next generation, nurses and other care workers who are caring for our older people, and our regional workers, who work longer and harder than any billionaire CEO or heiress ever has.

All of these workers pay more tax than multinational gas corporations. People are struggling, yet the gas corporations have never performed better. When gas export terminals opened in my home town of Gladstone in late 2014, pumping Australian gas into international markets, the majority of the benefits flowed to giant gas corporations.

While gas corporations enjoyed their new billions, my fellow Queenslanders got shafted, and Australians suddenly had to pay world prices for domestically produced gas. Taxing gas exports means everyday Australians can benefit from our own natural resources. That's an extra $17 billion a year for our underfunded public schools, for our hospitals and for our communities so that they can thrive rather than have people just trying to survive.

The Greens want what Australians want: a better deal for everyday people and a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports. If the government is too scared to do it on its own then it should give every Australian a say with a direct vote. Give us a plebiscite to back the change in.

It's time this Labor government stood up to the gas lobby. If it won't, let's take the power back and put it where power belongs: with the people.