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ABC News
2 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Reworked Petroleum Resource and Rent Tax raising $4 billion less than first thought
The tax on oil and gas profits is expected to raise $4 billion less than the government forecasted when it first announced a rework of the tax in 2023. Last year Treasurer Jim Chalmers amended the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, which applies to offshore petroleum projects including the recently-extended North West Shelf, in a measure the government said would raise an additional $2.4 billion over the four years from the 2023 financial year. Mr Chalmers said the changes would mean "offshore LNG industry pays more tax, sooner". In that year's budget the forecast was that $10.8 billion would be raised over those four years — but the federal budget handed down just days before the election was called reveals the government now expects to raise just $6.3 billion over that same period. It is also now forecasted to raise less each year than what was expected before the government's plans to rework the PRRT. The government's amendments to the PRRT came after a Morrison-era review of the tax found it needed to be updated, in part because it was designed for oil but liquid-natural gas now dominates. Mr Chalmers has previously said from the PRRT's inception in the 1980s to 2024, not a cent of Petroleum Resource Rent Tax had been paid on LNG facilities. That is because under the PRRT, tax only becomes payable once projects become cash flow positive, meaning all expenditure has been deducted, and LNG facilities have a large number of up-front costs. But Independent Senator David Pocock said the government had picked the weakest option put forward by Treasury, and now that appeared to be failing to deliver. "This is an absolute rort," Senator Pocock said. "In the last parliament Labor looked at PRRT, they had a range of options and they went with the very weakest one, and got that through with the Greens. "We are now getting less for our gas and still not a single cent of PRRT from offshore LNG, we are the second biggest exporter in the world, it is a total scam on Australians. "We're paying international prices for our own gas, and I think one of the shifts in this last election was finally the Coalition came out and said, 'Well actually we don't have a gas shortage, we have a gas export problem,' these companies have been taking the piss." Senator Pocock said the PRRT must be revisited. The federal government is deepening its investment in gas, having recently approved the extension of the North West Shelf by 40 years to 2070. A further decision whether to approve Woodside's proposal to open up the Browse gas field, which could produce an additional 11.4 million tonnes each year largely for export, also sits under assessment. The amount raised from the PRRT fluctuates with oil prices, and revenue raised in previous years has closely followed price fluctuations. The high water mark for tax paid through the PRRT was just under $2 billion in 2021-22, which the Australian Tax Office said reflected increased profitability due to higher oil prices cause by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in that year. But despite the government expecting to raise significantly more than that in the years since, it has not done so and is no longer projecting it will do so. Mr Chalmers did not respond to a request for comment, but in recent days has pointed to the PRRT reforms as one achievement of the last term. Independent MP Zali Steggall said the government has the opportunity to be more ambitious. "I don't accept that that was difficult reform to achieve, it was a long overdue loophole that needed to be closed for the sector," Ms Steggall said. "It was a bare minimum of what needed to be achieved. "I think the treasurer had a lot of lobbying from the fossil fuel and gas sector in particular." Ms Steggall said Treasury put forward as one option that at least 20 per cent of LNG revenue remain eligible for PRRT, about double the amount the government ultimately adopted. She said looking at that would be a good starting point for revisiting the PRRT. "At a time of record profits, I think that would be a much more equitable outcome for the Australian people," Ms Steggall said. "You can't on one hand talk about budget repair and needing to increase revenue but only target individual endeavour ... all tax has to be on the table."
ABC News
26-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Pat Dodson wants Anthony Albanese to forge ahead with Indigenous treaty and truth telling
Father of Reconciliation Pat Dodson has challenged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to resume an ambitious Indigenous Affairs agenda in his second term, warning Indigenous people could otherwise face cultural annihilation. "If you don't participate, you'll end up being the subject and the property of the assimilationists ... that's what the new assimilation is about, completing the obliteration of Aboriginal people from the landscape," Mr Dodson told 7.30. "We've got to build now, start now, the time has come; we can't keep kicking it down the road." The Yawuru Man from Broome, Western Australia served seven years in the Senate until early 2024 and has been a lifelong champion of Indigenous rights. He warned that the next reconciliation pathway must have a strong focus "otherwise it remains nebulous". Mr Dodson has called on the government to set up a national truth telling commission (Makarrata) and a treaty process, the remaining requests of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart after the voice referendum. "They can do that because it doesn't require constitutional referendum, it can be done by way of legislation," he said. The former senator argued the government should also adopt the system of local and regional Indigenous advisory bodies recommended by Indigenous leaders Tom Calma and Marcia Langton in their 2021 report to the Morrison government. "Whether they call it a voice or whether they call it a regional assembly ... but an entity and that entity will have to be representative of the regional people. That way we can start to manage the awful incarceration rates of young people and the underlying circumstances that's given rise to that," he said Mr Dodson says he was disappointed when Mr Albanese took a step back from Indigenous reconciliation efforts following the failed voice referendum. "He had to do that." Mr Dodson's ongoing cancer treatment meant he was unable to play more than a small role in the voice referendum campaign. He left federal politics in November 2023, disappointed by the defeat of the voice. "I felt the sadness," he told 730. "We saw a response at the poll that I think shocked many of us, many people felt gutted … I thought time will heal this." He believes underlying the resistance to the voice was a failure to see Indigenous people as sovereign people. "We don't know how to recognise Aboriginal peoples as sovereign peoples, because we fear this will undermine our own sovereignty," he said. "They think this is something about (Indigenous Australians) getting something better or more than they might be getting." Mr Dodson said the bar for reconciliation via a referendum vote was too high due to the double majority required for constitutional change. "We're never going to see a provision put forward to support Aboriginal people be successful," he said. Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price also made a name for herself during the referendum as the opposition spokesperson for Indigenous affairs and the face of the 'No' campaign. In a press club address she claimed colonisation was not bad for Australia, angering many Indigenous leaders. Senator Nampijinpa Price criticised Indigenous organisations, claiming they sought to "demonise colonial settlement in its entirety and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement". When asked to clarify whether she thought any Indigenous people were suffering negative impacts of colonisation, she at the time responded: "No, there are no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation." Mr Dodson said those assertions when made by an Indigenous person would mean "one would have to question their loyalties". "I don't know how that view could be sustained in the light of the historical truth," he said. Mr Dodson spent his early years running from Western Australian police, when mixed-race families were illegal. Mr Dodson says he has continued to see the effects of colonisation on his people. "It's not as blatant as it was back in their day, you were cajoled, put in chains or you're whipped or you're just denied and refused," he said "it's a lot more subtle (now) and its long-term intent isn't clear." After a lifetime of attempting to take the richness of Indigenous culture and translate it into Western law and politics, Mr Dodson said there is more to be done. "It's a path worth travelling on, even though it's with its troubles," he said. "Now is a time for listening more closely to the waves, to the wind, to the environment, to see how the leaves move and don't move … to discern what is it that's happening? He believes Mr Albanese has a responsibility to Aboriginal leaders. "Yunupingu entrusted (him) to carry that fire stick, to bring about the kind of reconciliation and healing this nation needs — he can't drop that." Watch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV Do you know more about this story? Get in touch with 7.30 here.
The Guardian
12-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
To the new environment minister, Murray Watt: it's time to get reforms right
Long overdue reform of national environment laws is unfinished business for the 48th parliament and the re-elected Albanese government. Senator Murray Watt, a Queenslander, is well respected within the government and has a reputation for taking hard decisions and bringing together diverse stakeholders. Both of these attributes will be at a premium if the minister is to succeed where others have not. Throughout the election campaign, expectations were raised that the failed attempts in the last parliament to overhaul and reform the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 would be a priority for the prime minister in this term. Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as an email Three major attempts to reform environment laws have failed over the past 15 years, including in the first term of the Rudd government, during the Morrison government and again last term. All ended in more division and confusion. For environmentalists, the need for the Australian government to play a stronger and clearer leadership role in stemming the protracted decline in the health of the natural world is an article of faith, backed by a depressing array of scientific reports that highlight the inextricable loss of wildlife and biodiversity, compounded by the real time impacts of climate change. Extinction is not a moment in time but rather a consequence of thousands of small and piecemeal decisions over many years. A bitter harvest of large-scale extinction has been hard baked into our nation's future. Without urgent change, including large scale restoration and reforestation of previously cleared country, we are leaving the future a landscape devoid of birdsong and wonder. From the perspective of the natural world, the existing laws have so many loopholes that you could drive a truck through them. The logging of native forests and large-scale land clearing of carbon-rich and biologically important regrowth forests and woodlands continues to get the green light. For business, the laws are perceived as placing a complex and environmentally ineffectual brake on economic development, including the rollout of renewables, new housing developments on the outskirts of our major cities and new mines. The curse of our federated system of government and a constitution drafted to meet the needs of Australia in the late 19th century means that when it comes to protecting the environment and supporting new development, decision-making between all layers of government is conflicted, complex and confusing. We get the worst of all worlds, where process trumps environmental and development outcomes on every level. Despite this, a blueprint for durable reform was put forward by Graeme Samuel, who conducted an independent review of the effectiveness of the laws in 2020. These recommendations became the heart of the Nature Positive Plan which was developed by then minister Tanya Plibersek in late 2022. The Nature Positive Plan was centred on three key concepts. The first was an unambiguously pro-environment commitment by the Australian government to create and enforce clear national environmental standards. These new and powerful standards were intended to make sure the government fulfilled its obligation to protect 'matters of national environmental significance' in all its decision-making and to support long-term conservation planning, including support for recovery plans, regional plans and embedding genuine partnerships with First Nations communities. The second element of the reform aimed to simplify decision-making in respect to major development projects, including through reform and possible accreditation of state government assessment and project approval systems, consistent with the requirements of the national environmental standards. The third reform was the creation of an independent environment protection agency to build trust and accountability in decision-making, to ensure standards were applied, projects were compliant and to remove politics from the day-to-day of environmental policy. These three pillars of policy reform remain critically important to build a durable pathway forward. To deliver them needs leadership from the highest levels of government at state and federal level. Attempts to drive these complex reforms through the environment ministry alone have failed every time over the past 15 years. Furthermore, unless the states are brought in at the outset, many of the on-ground reforms required to stem the loss and to promote the restoration of nature will fail, as ultimately the states retain most powers to protect the environment. The role and influence of the Western Australian government in helping to scuttle reforms in the past term are a case in point. It is easy to throw rocks from outside the tent – it is time for the state premiers to become part of the solution rather than blockers. Long-term reform is not going to be easy, but we have now wasted 15 years since the first reforms to the national environment laws were mooted, and everyone has lost, especially the natural world. Watt has a massive responsibility, as does the prime minister and his cabinet, to get it right this time and to bring the parliament with them. Without support in the Senate, reforms will again languish and whither on the vine. Lyndon Schneiders is executive director of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation
Daily Mail
07-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
China's message for Albanese after election win
China has congratulated Anthony Albanese on Labor's decisive election win, signalling it hopes for closer ties with Australia amid a trade war with the United States. 'China stands ready to work with the new Australian government led by Prime Minister Albanese and, under the fundamental guidance provided by the important common understandings between the leaders of the two countries, continue advancing a more mature, stable, and productive comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Australia,' China's foreign ministry said in a statement. China's ministry added that this would 'benefit both nations and peoples' and contribute to 'peace and stability in the region and beyond.' China is Australia's largest trading partner, and following the election, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government's top priority would be protecting Australia from the fallout of the US-China tariff war. 'The immediate focus is on global economic uncertainty, US and China, and what it means for us,' Mr Chalmers said. 'What's happening, particularly between the US and China, does cast a dark shadow over the global economy. We need to have the ability, and we will have the ability, to manage that uncertainty.' Under the former Morrison government, diplomatic ties with China deteriorated sharply after Australia called for an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19, amid suspicions it leaked from a Wuhan laboratory. In retaliation, Beijing imposed a range of trade bans on Australian goods, and issued a list of 14 grievances accusing Australia of racism and aligning with a so-called US-led 'anti-China' campaign. Since the change of government in 2022, Australia–China relations have steadily improved, with many of China's trade restrictions on Australian goods now lifted. China is expected to maintain that momentum and seek more Australian imports due to the now prohibitive costs of American imports due to tariffs. Despite the recent thaw in relations, military tensions remain between the two nations, with the Albanese government publicly criticizing China in February over a live-fire military exercise in the Tasman Sea. The drills were held in international waters, beneath a busy flight corridor between Australia and New Zealand, forcing 49 commercial aircraft to change course. While the activity did not breach international law, Mr Albanese and Defense Minister Richard Marles said China failed to provide adequate notice. 'They [China] did so with very little notice and that was the issue that was very disconcerting for the airlines involved,' Mr Marles said. Chinese defense ministry spokesperson Wu Qian hit back and accused Australia of 'hyping up' the live firing exercises. 'China's actions are in full compliance with international law and international practices and will not affect aviation flight safety,' Ms Wu said in a statement. 'Australia, knowing this well, made unreasonable accusations against China and deliberately hyped it up. We are deeply surprised and strongly dissatisfied with this.' At the time, Anne-Marie Brady, a Mandarin-speaking professor at the University of Canterbury who specializes in Chinese domestic and foreign policy, told Daily Mail Australia that the drills were a warning of China's future intentions. 'The live fire exercises in the Tasman are a shot across the bow to Australia and New Zealand of China's sea power and desire to normalize a permanent presence in the South West Pacific,' Ms Brady said. 'There has been a steady buildup of People's Liberation Army naval capacity across the South West Pacific.' Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law at the Australian National University, said China could have easily conducted the exercises in its own waters. But he warned that the reason China chose this location was 'to project its military force far beyond its own shores'. 'These types of activities are also important intelligence gathering exercises,' he said. 'Each Chinese Navy visit will give it more experience in waters where it does not frequently sail, while also gauging how Australia and New Zealand respond.' Mr Albanese, Australia's first prime minister to win a second consecutive term in two decades, promised in remarks on Sunday that he would run a disciplined and orderly government, stressing that Australians had voted for unity. 'We will be a disciplined, orderly government in our second term, just like we have been in our first,' Mr Albanese told reporters. 'The Australian people voted for unity rather than division,' Mr Albanese added in brief public comments. Polls had shown Labor trailing the opposition conservative coalition for nine months until March, amid widespread angst about the government's handling of inflation and consequent rising interest rates and a sharp decline in the value of the Australian dollar. But the polls flipped when the Liberals unveiled a proposal to slash the federal workforce, which was compared to the Trump administration's moves to cut back government agencies. A proposal to force federal workers back to the office five days a week was also criticized as unfair to women. Trump's April 2 tariff announcement added to voters' unease as it sent shockwaves through global markets and raised concerns about the impact on superannuation funds. Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Visit our profile page and hit the follow button above for more of the news you need.
West Australian
29-04-2025
- Politics
- West Australian
Political comeback on the cards for former Liberal treasurer - 'never say never'
Josh Frydenberg hasn't ruled out a future political comeback, while praising Peter Dutton as a 'principled, decent, strong leader' who should be Australia's next Prime Minister. After an ad-libbed speech rallying Perth's Jewish community against anti-Semitism, the former Morrison Government Treasurer weighed into the Federal election campaign. Asked when he will launch a political comeback, he didn't rule it out. 'Not in a hurry,' he laughed. Mr Frydenberg said his priority right now is his young family and 'life is good' but 'never say never' and 'I still see myself as youngish'. When pressed on whether he still wants to be Prime Minister, he said: 'I don't think ambition is a crime'. 'Bt During a rapid-fire round of word association with The West Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Dore, Mr Frydenberg described current Treasurer Jim Chalmers as 'determined' but struggled to describe the Teal MP who ousted him in the seat of Kooyong, eventually calling her simply 'teal'. He didn't hold back when asked to describe Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court, calling the Teal fundraiser 'sad'. Mr Frydenberg wouldn't tip a winner on May 3, describing the Federal election as 'up in the air' and warned that both major parties are in a world of pain due to slumping primary votes. He recalled the 2004 election result that saw 89 of 150 seats decided by first preferences, compared to the 2022 election when the primary vote decided only 15 contests. 'Massive change and, for the Coalition, we don't have the feeder parties like the Greens and some of the teals that are making their way to the Labor party voting pile,' Mr Frydenberg said. 'It's going to create a real challenge for us going forward and a challenge for the country, because if we have hung parliaments and minority governments, I think that's inherently challenging and can bring more instability.'
