One of the issues with sushi train political journalism (just grabbing whatever comes round on the train) is that only the bright and shiny – often speculative – pieces get picked up. But the more staid and plodding carriages – those with warnings outside the political cycle, with a focus on the bigger picture, they tend to get left to circle the track ignored.
Tue 6 Oct 2026 09.48 AEDT
Photo: AAP Image/Christopher Hopkins
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One of the issues with sushi train political journalism (just grabbing whatever comes round on the train) is that only the bright and shiny – often speculative – pieces get picked up.
Barnaby Joyce yelled at his dog?! Anika Wells won an international award? The Greens changed leaders? A lobby group with a vested interest is warning against a change that would impact its vested interest? Go to town.
But the more staid and plodding carriages – those with warnings outside the political cycle, with a focus on the bigger picture, they tend to get left to circle the track ignored.
That’s not new – reports get released and ignored every day.
But with all the focus on the minutiae of the political cycle, important moments get missed.
Like this from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which detailed China’s emergence as a gas reseller. Despite what you may have been told, demand for gas in China is easing, with the emerging super power transiting to renewable power faster than originally expected in a bid to control its own energy future.
It’s managed the mismatch between its plateauing demand for LNG and its own rapidly growing LNG contract portfolio, the IEEFA tells us, by re-selling imported gas. It’s been so successful at it, it has resold between 17 and 19 million tonnes of LNG in 2025 alone (roughly the equivalent of what it imported from Australia), and earned an estimated profit of $US4.6 billion ($A6.6 billion) between 2021 and June 2026. And where is that gas coming from? The US and Australia.
China signed new supply contracts to import about 60 million tonnes of gas between 2021 and 2023, but now finds it doesn’t need as much as it signed for. So it’s on-selling it for a profit. If this story sounds familiar to you, it’s because Japan has done the same thing, creating its own gas industry from the surplus gas it receives from Australia.
With the United States war on Iran cementing the idea that energy security is national security, many gas importers are hastening their own renewable energy transitions, leading to an expected gas glut in less than two decades.
All of this came in the same week as the latest corporate tax data that showed, once again, that major gas producers paid no company tax. And while yes, the tax that is meant to capture gas profit taxes – the PRRT – did increase from what was paid last year, it raised less than 2020-21.
Japan is making money from Australian gas. China is making money from Australian gas. And in Australia, we can’t even get governments to agree on a gas reservation policy, let alone adopt a gas tax that would not only ease some of the revenue woes of Treasury, it would give space for cost-of-living relief.
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Australia doesn’t need any more gas exploration – we are sending so much of it overseas, so cheaply, that our two biggest export markets are making bank from our resources – it just needs a bit of bravery. So that maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t see reports showing that, for the first time, younger Australians are worse off than their parents.
Which brings us to the second report released this past week, to very little attention and fanfare. The Senate Inquiry into Intergenerational Housing Inequity reported back and found – gasp – housing is a primary driver of inequality in Australia. The committee managed to agree that:
The housing crisis is affecting people’s lives. Multiple adult generations are living in overcrowded houses, and too many young Australians are deferring family formation and are unable to strike out on their own and enter adult life. They despair of saving a house deposit or being able to afford their own home. Too many live in real anxiety about maintaining a safe roof over their heads and affording rent, given falls in real wages, extremely low vacancy rates, and rent inflation.
But in terms of what to do about it, the committee fell along party lines. The chair, Greens senator Barbara Pocock, recommended national rent caps, expanding public housing to at least 10 per cent of housing stock over the next 10 years, and low-interest home loans for first-home buyers. The Labor members pointed to the changes and programs their government has enacted and the Coalition blamed migration and just pumped supply solutions.
This report may seem like one of many in the past 30 years, but it points to a bigger problem – one that continues to see Australians fall victim to the policy paralysis of their governments (no matter who is in charge) and why problems are never addressed; they just can’t get out of their own way.
That report, highlighting the inequality between generations on such a basic fundamental right – shelter, and a home of one’s own – was swamped by breathless reports about a tiny drop in year-on-year house prices. Which may – may – take the average Australian house price back to where it was in December 2023. When we were already reporting how unaffordable the housing market was.
But because there wasn’t a double-digit increase and in fact, in some regions, on some higher-level homes, a small decrease, all anyone heard about was the potential for a loss, when in reality, we’ve built a system of generational losers.
Australia’s political and media classes have such strenuous objections to change when it is for the benefit of all Australians – not just the power players we’re used to kowtowing to – that we’re incapable of looking at the bigger picture.
We don’t like to name the big problems in Australia. We’re too busy looking at the next carriage on the political sushi train to realise the track itself is broken. Zoom out and you’ll find a much larger menu on offer – which may also contain – double gasp – some context. And also, just maybe, actual solutions.
Amy Remeikis is a contributing editor for The New Daily and chief political analyst for The Australia Institute
This piece was first published in The New Daily. Read original here.
