Can you be as bad as Joe Hockey, who said poor people don’t drive, and suggested that the solution to the housing crisis was for young people to get a good job that pays money? Well, alas, the NSW Premier Chris Minns has now reached the Joe Hockey level of economic ignorance.
The Australian Services Union (ASU) is right, a 25% gas tax would raise far more than the PRRT does, and enough to pay for vital community services that Australians rely on.
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Rebekha Sharkie is right: Australia Institute research has found that Medicare is failing regional and remote Australians, with rural people getting sicker and dying younger than their city counterparts.
In an op-ed published in the Sydney Morning Herald, chair of Independent Schools NSW Margery Evans argues that Jane Caro’s Rich Kid Poor Kid Vantage Point essay generalises and misinterprets the state of Australian education. But in doing so, Evans does exactly what she accuses Caro of, misleading the reader about the actual state of private school education.
In an interview with ABC Perth, PM Anthony Albanese defended his decision not to tax gas exports, made claims about gas company tax payments and called on The Australia Institute to be 'fair dinkum'. But, is he being 'fair dinkum' too?
Taxing the gas industry fairly won’t make companies leave Australia; Norway didn’t kill its oil and gas industry when it raised their taxes. In fact, it has flourished in the five decades since then.
In the 2023-24 financial year, the gas company Santos Limited had its tenth straight year of making zero corporate tax payments. Over the ten years to 2023-24, Australian nurses paid $52 billion in tax.
The problem is, that the ABC article was not based on data from the Department of Social Services. Rather, it was based on research compiled for a life insurers lobby group, whose board are all CEOs of insurance companies.
Resources Minister Madeleine King recently scored some headlines with her comment to Radio National Breakfast, that free gas “is clearly an absurd proposition. And to be frank, I'm mystified as to how they get away with such tosh.” Except, the claims aren't "tosh" at all.
The claim that Australia gives away export gas for free has been at the centre of the debate around taxing Australia’s gas exports. And, it's true. Gas companies export approximately 80 million tonnes of LNG from Australia each year, and just over half of this is extracted from offshore areas controlled by the Australian Government. The Australian Government does not make the gas companies pay for this gas, thereby giving it away for free.
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