MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator HODGINS-MAY (Victoria) (16:03): I move: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The need for the government to finally introduce a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports to ensure Australians receive a fair return from our gas resources, as gas corporations including Shell, Santos and Woodside benefit from reported war-driven windfall revenues while Australians continue to face high energy prices and a cost-of-living crisis.
Today we are here to discuss the need for a gas export tax in this country. Seven in 10 Australians are demanding that this place show the leadership expected of them and tax our multinational gas giants and get a fair share back for Australia from our gas. The government and the corporate parties in here are faced with a political choice today.
Will they side up and saddle up with their corporate gas donors, or will they vote with the Australian people who are demanding a fair return on Australia's gas and who are demanding at least a 25 per cent tax on gas exports? We are at a time when we are seeing massive corporations like Woodside, Santos and Shell reporting record wartime profits. They are making billions of dollars in revenue and profits, yet the government tells us that now is not the time to act.
If it is not the time to act now, when these multinational corporations are raking it in and Aussies are doing it tough—they are literally budgeting down to the dollar in a cost-of-living crisis and making impossible decisions about whether to fill the car, whether to buy some fresh groceries or whether to get their medication—then when will it be? This government has been unwilling to stare down around 12 multinational gas exporters and say, 'Hang on, guys; it's time for you to pay your fair share.
Instead, they are looking down the barrel of knocking 160,000 people off the NDIS. What an utter shame! Seven in 10 Australians support a gas export tax.
Will this Labor government today do what it was elected to do and represent those people instead of its corporate donors? The Greens led an inquiry into a gas tax or into the taxation of Australia's resources, and we heard that Japan makes more money off Australian gas than Australia does. That is outrageous.
We heard that this export tax will be borne by the producers—not by other trading nations and not by the Australian public but by the producers, who are making record wartime profits. We heard that millions of dollars were spent by these same gas exporters trying to kill this gas export tax and that they were going to attend Labor's $5,500-a-head post-budget-night fundraiser.
It is outrageous. We are seeing donations funnelled into the corporate parties from the likes of Woodside and Santos. In the last 10 years, Woodside have donated $1.2 million.
When I asked them, 'What do you get for this donation or investment?' they replied, 'Oh, we get policy meetings.' I mean, come on! We are in this place to do a job, represent the people and have meetings, and they shouldn't cost. It's outrageous.
Even at Labor's own national conference, their own rank-and-file members believed that Australia should get a fair share from Australia's resources. And what does the Prime Minister respond with? He calls this campaign and this push that was driven by the unions a slogan, nonsense and BS.
This is not a slogan; this is a demand from the Australian people to do what you're elected to do. As recently as yesterday, the Prime Minister couldn't even bring himself to put the two words in the same sentence. He couldn't even say 'gas tax' when he was asked by my colleague in the lower house about this—pathetic!
It is time for political leadership and time for a gas tax. Let's get it done. We can do it today.
(Time expired)