Greens call for 25% gas tax to protect Aussies from ‘war-driven’ prices

The Greens have called for “fair compensation” to Australian households, on the assumption that the US-Israel military action in Iran creates a surge in gas prices.

In a statement issued late last week, Australian Greens spokesperson for resources, Senator Steph Hodgins-May, said that the outbreak of a major conflict by Russia in Ukraine in 2022 saw the global price of gas rise to “record highs”.

“Because our gas system is still rigged in favour of massive exporters, increases in the global market price are also dumped straight onto households back home,” she said.

“Australia doesn’t have a gas shortage. We have an export problem.”

“We export such enormous volumes of gas that if the government had implemented a 25 per cent export tax when it was first proposed at the end of last year, Australians would already have collected billions in extra revenue,” the senator continued.

“With prices likely to surge again due to the illegal war in the Middle East, and with a cost-of-living crisis at home, Labor must act now to cushion the blow.”

A tax on exports, Senator Hodgins-May went on, would help decouple Australia’s domestic market from volatile global prices.

“A 25 per cent tax is a step towards fair compensation. Gas companies have pillaged Australia’s resources for decades and now stand to make billions more in blood money from war-driven price spikes.”

“These corporations salivate at the prospect of global conflict because it lets them gouge prices overseas and here at home.”

“It’s Australian households and businesses who will pay the price for decisions made in boardrooms and war rooms from Washington to Canberra.”

The news follows a call from independent ACT senator David Pocock for a Senate inquiry examining the amount of petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) currently paid on liquified natural gas (LNG), and how it compares with other jurisdictions such as Norway and Qatar.

A vote on Senator Pocock’s motion to establish a special Senate committee to oversee the inquiry is set for today (Tuesday, 10 March).

The senator said that Australians had had enough of multinational gas companies profiting off their resources without providing a fair return.

“We get one chance to capture the benefits of the LNG boom and invest in the things Australians need most: housing, health, education,” he said.

“Currently we are squandering what Norway has turned into a $3 trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund.”