Majority of Offshore Gas Projects Paid ZERO Royalties

"The Australian public thinks the gas industry should be paying for the gas.
"We can keep doing dumb things if we want to.
"But if this Government wants to have more money for schools, more money for hospitals...there is a simple tax reform opportunity here."
- Executive Director Richard Denniss on ABC The Business
Read the full report: australiainstitute.org.au/rep...
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[@justgjt]

This is outrageous and is basically condoned theft from the Australian People. An independent inquiry is warranted.

[@synthclub]

No, an enquiry is not needed, just immediate royalties payments collected.

[@lubedee5246]

@@synthcluband make it retrospective

[@kingdomfor1]

If the gas companies are getting the gas for free , why are we consumers paying so much ? , that the big question.

[@josemadrid2913]

It’s time the government changed the rules. We have missed out on billions and billions of dollars over decades

[@blackcreekorganicfarm296]

Naaaa only since the Gillard government And she was owned by Hillary Clinton

[@t-dog8528]

Time we changed the 2 party government

[@Samus2400]

Thank god we have the Aus institute fighting for us.

[@ew4951]

Keep calling this out. Also tell us average day Aussies what can we do to change this extortion of what we should get entitled to! Who and how do we vote to enforce changes! Thank you again Aus Institute for calling this out!

[@JohnH1]

Keep the pressure on the government.

[@TheAbeKane]

Need to ditch ALP/LNP if we have a chance of removing these thieves

[@sumgamelab]

Corruption, corruption as far as the eye can see.

[@toddb9313]

The Australian people getting ripped off, brought to you by Labor and the LNP.

[@ateoforever7434]

The Morrison government is to blame.

[@toddb9313]

@@ateoforever7434 Actually this has been going on for over 40 years.

[@dereckbrannigan6195]

These gas companies laugh all the way to the bank - and Australians get taken for fools.

[@thedudescar674]

When can Australia get a government with a spine, where else are these companies going to get the gas, our take is shameful.

[@marrta61]

Yes please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@frankrusselldesign7563]

Royalties should close to 90% on everything. If they don't like. tell them to get out the of the country.

[@dereckbrannigan6195]

OUR gas should FREE to Australians

[@pheonixedfound723]

It's almost like successive Australian Governments have been supporting and enabling businesses instead of its peoples.

[@dodgygoose3054]

This has to be shared on every platform as you know the gas industry & the politicians would like this hidden from public view.

[@ssj4vrn]

its not pressure by gas industry its favors (post retirement benefits) and kickbacks

[@arnobertogna4718]

So who’s taking the piss out of who - unlucky Australian citizens - the oil corporations have lobbied & paid off the politicians & politicians wonder why trust in Gov’t is deteriorating -

[@mr-iz8cx]

No dividends paid to our citizens either

[@augustusomega4708]

TAX! TAX! TAX!,,,there aint no free lunch on the Australian peoples dime. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS double dealing and how are they getting quietly compensated so the commonwealth neglects to collect the correct royalties on behalf of the Australian people. WHO ARE THESE SCOUNDRELS digging up our commons and profiting direct, who have they corrupted with pennies so they can plunder billions

[@johnwely]

THE YANKS

[@crazyg74]

There are several former politicians now working in the resources industry. Not hard to imagine why they were given cushy retirement positions after parliament.

[@augustusomega4708]

Martin Ferguson the ex resources minister for labor

[@iamurage]

Please investigate the tax these companies are paying! Please link so we can see how upstanding these leading companies really are. Another thing to link to the story is the clean up after a well is depleted, including both onshore and off shore.

[@alanrainey5022]

Hooray for The Australia Institute!!! Yes, government is to blame, especially some particular government officials. By the way, what is the definition of a traitor to this country???? Or what should it be?

[@tfalani3861]

Matt Ferguson resource minister at the time. He now sits pretty on the board of one of these criminal capitalists.

[@andrewkirtley6565]

Just a coincidence that pollies all end up in high salary gas positions 😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅

[@Karl-Benny]

Where ia our Ministers answering this Question

[@Miri2Go]

It's left to Greens, independents and teals.

[@davidbrent9660]

This needs to change ASAP. Australia could be a rich country with the best infrastructure in the world with little to no income tax for its citizens if the country was run properly by the government. Successive governments have been and are just so incompetent .

[@simewill]

Absolutely criminal

[@fattykiwi91]

Always taking the most and contributing the least, thank you for shedding light on their greedy practices

[@tomtesoro5465]

SO? When will we get action on this? Or will it all fare away as usual and same as all other royalties we are sll dudded from? On tjis alone politicians should be kicked out!

[@anthonyhardy6144]

Norway has a USD 1.6 trillion dollar (1,600 BILLION) wealth fund for all Norwegians by collecting royalties from oil and gas companies. Here we just seem to let them take it with no royalties collected.....

[@jbh2761]

Our government is a disgrace to the Australian people allowing this to happen , get your act together !!!

[@marrta61]

What is wrong with our political parties? Are they up for sale???

[@PD-fc3og]

Ummmmm YEP !!!

[@stanstreatfield3485]

What about "The Business" they might be partly to blame for not alerting the Australian people to this in the past . They have been supposedly reporting on business operations in Australia for years and have never identified this problem. It never occurred to them to look at how much tax was being paid by the gas industry?

[@darthex0]

Are they giving it away for free to the buyers?

[@ateoforever7434]

( Gas corporations )....." if you charge us taxes we leave ".....Then go ! we get nothing from you anyway.

[@therealmonty66]

Well done excellent report.

[@doobs9643]

"Further, thanks to a change in legislation regarding the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax (PRRT), which covers LNG exports, Australia now receives less in PRRT payments than it did 20 years ago even though petroleum export revenues have soared by more than $50 billion. Labor’s minister for resources Martin Ferguson presided over a number of the legislative changes which allowed gas extractors to avoid tax before he retired from politics and became a fossil fuel lobbyist. Ferguson is one of many former politicians in the fossil fuels lobby." Thanks "Michael West Media" ( Fossil Fuel Fiesta: Australia’s coal and gas giants get more in subsidies than they pay in royalties, by Callum Foote | May 26, 2021 ) and thanks "Punters Politics" for pointing it out. and thank you Martin Ferguson for that generous kick in the pants.

[@Power_Prawnstar]

Peter Dutton be like, yeah more gas!

[@sspirito3130]

Richard Denniss speaks too much sense. The entire country suffers of stockholm syndrome. Every time a government tries to tax or stop a resource project, an army of ordinary peasants (I mean taxpayers) is ready to fight to defend the oil & gas and mining industries as if their life depends on them

[@adampinner4335]

Both of the big parties Must be held accountable! Give ONE NATION a chance 🙏

[@Sarsaparilla420]

I found some of her questions to be kinda naive and a bit odd, but it gave Richard the opportunity to explain the situation even further to drive the point home. Great interview and thanks for the public advocacy.

[@warboyrb]

You think they are naive - she is just reading nonsense that bosses are putting on the teleprompter. You'd think ABC would go to ground on this, yet they're just sweeping the money leaving Australia issue under the carpet.

[@Peter-hg2oc]

1 word corruption

[@rodneyallwood1394]

Lets see if the ABC follows up with pressure on our politicians

[@antonroux6737]

So what's the risk of deterring gas investment or industry if we don't get substantial benefit from it anyway?

[@danmosby7980]

if we collected the same as Norway that would be $70 Billion over last 4 years. we could have free tertiary education again if we collected these taxes. How manay schools hospitals and defence could we pay for how much reduced taxes could we have.

[@geob8172]

It is called Money Laundering.

[@emceeboogieboots1608]

As this gets bigger, I hope that I witness the Liberals turn on this issue, and the ALP are left looking like the outsiders. Just to demonstrate how close we are to a uniparty country Or will they both continue to stand up for the industry that has been so generous to their political campaigns in the past There could be no better outcome than both parties to defend the system that clearly is NOT in the best interests of Australians I will vote for anyone else

[@Karl-Benny]

It`s amazing it takes a you tuber about Dumb Aussies to to get Media involved

[@KryCaNe]

I’m confused how the gas price cap implemented by the Albanese government works? Is the government paying the gas industry not to hike wholesale prices in Australia? If so, how much does it cost? Seems like a short term “tweak” to a long term issue.

[@falafelscobes6122]

Health and Education spending is always increasing. We need a new city! How can Western Australia only have Perth? Not enough water ? Lake Argyle is huge.

[@beesplaining1882]

Yes spending increases to offset the erosion of inflation. It often goes backwards in real terms despite increasing in net terms.

[@fatherburning358]

Whats really going on here? Who signed the deals? If this doesn't change we wont look like fools. We will be fools. A resources rich nation struggling to pay our rent.

[@Ekka007]

The whole thing needs to fall into a line similar to normal onshore mining, pay the royalty rate .... the business, plant, equipment, exploration, capital costs etc to be deprecated and claimed same as other mining. So you might say, "well the CAPEX is $5billion" ..... yeah so. Once built + commissioned and extraction/processing are made the royalty tax is due and paid. Even if you write down/off all expenses and break even, no tax payable as zero profit, the royalty tax still would have been paid ..... the royalty is not dependent on the profitability of the business any different to the PAYG of the workers wages. On the expenses sheet before company tax on profit you deduct PAYG tax, you deduct Royalty Tax already paid, simples. What's wrong with changing it to that? You could also put at tax as the % of the average piece sold X amount sold, or have staggered like QLD did to coal. The PRRT looks like junk frankly and exploited. 2022 to 2023fy PRRT tax collected was only $2.28 billion.

[@nxc1974]

Vote LibLabLast!

[@danzigvssartre]

Lol. Didn’t see the Libs trying to change it.

[@user-op8cw6li4o]

They will pay for Albos wedding. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@chrisgilpin194]

Disgraceful

[@liliworth8098]

SOLUTION ? WHEN ?

[@pglove9554]

How else do you inflate gas costs for Aussies? $$$$

[@robertdavie1221]

Our cost of living is rising rapidly because the price we pay for goods and services is being driven upwards by the aggressive taxation levelled upon it by all three levels of government in this country. These goods and services include fuel, energy, utilities, food, clothing, council and commercial rates etc. So when we purchase goods and services the price we pay includes all these taxes which are also continually rising. So why are they so high? The answer to this question is that we, the citizens of this country, are almost entirely the sole source of taxation revenue for the three levels of government in this country. Because each year, big business, including many who are foreign, pay little to nothing in tax amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars lost to the nation, meaning you and I have to make up the difference. “Australians are paying more personal income tax as a share of government revenue than any other advanced economy, except for the high-taxing Scandinavian welfare state of Denmark, according to an international report that renews pressure on the Coalition and Labor to reform the tax system. Governments in Australia also raised almost double the amount of revenue from taxes on property compared to other wealthy nations, chiefly due to state-based stamp duty on real estate purchases, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report said.” - AFR(policy-tax-and-super-personal-tax-take-second-highest-in-oecd-20211206-p59f3y) “A report for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that as a share of government revenue, our personal income taxes account for 42 per cent, which is more than twice as much as the OECD average of 23.5 per cent.” - ABC(news-2021-12-07-personal-income-tax-in-australia-amongst-the-13666488) The data below comes from the ABS and shows just how big the problem of tax avoidance by big business is in this country. Total tax collected from individuals by all levels of government in 2020-2021 was $593,184 million or $593.184 billion as shown by the ABS (abs-ausstats-abs@.nsf-mf-5506.0) Total tax payable by Corporate Australia in 2020-2021 was $68,895,227,402 or $68.895 billion as can be found at - Data(dataset-ds-dga-c2524c87-cea4-4636-acac-599a82048a26-details). That means we citizens contributed $524.289 billion dollars in taxes while big business was liable for only $68.895 billion dollars. This represents, 68.895/(524.289 + 68.895) x 100% = 11.614% of the total tax expected to be collected by the federal government was paid by big business. According to the ABS the total income of big business in this period was $2,311,484,379,849 or $2311.5 billion or $2.3115 trillion and so in being liable for only $68.895 billion in tax they only paid 2.98% of their income in tax. If big business paid the same rate of tax as the rest of us, say 30%, then the total tax take from big business in 2020-21 should amount to $693.45 billion. Even if they were only expected to pay 20% of their income in tax then they would be liable for $462.3 billion. If we set the bar at 15% then they would be liable for $346.73 billion. Such a sum would make an enormous difference to reducing the taxation burden on workers and small businesses from all three levels of government and hence to significantly reducing the cost of living pressures we are currently experiencing. What about our schools, universities, hospitals, defence and other expenses we must meet? No wonder the cost of living has got out of hand in this country as the tax burden of big business has been transferred onto the shoulders of the community and so by its very weight crushing the economic life out of it. Around one third of big businesses don’t pay any tax, “One-third of large companies in Australia still don’t pay any tax despite a taxation office crackdown on the big end of town that has been under way for five years.” - Theguardian-(australia-news-2021-dec-10-one-third-of-big-businesses-in-australia-still-dont-pay-any-tax-five-years-into-ato-crackdown) Some of these businesses even receive handouts or subsidies from the government. “Fossil fuel subsidies cost Australians a staggering $10.3 billion in FY 2020-21 with one Commonwealth tax break alone ($7.84 billion) exceeding the $7.82 billion spent on the Australian Army, according to research released today by The Australia Institute. In fact, $10.3 billion in Government subsidies means that in 2020, every minute of every day $19,686 was effectively given to coal, oil and gas companies and major users of fossil fuels…………………………………………….. …….. “Coal, oil and gas companies in Australia give the impression that they are major contributors to the Australian economy, but our research shows that they are major recipients of government funds,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.“ - Australiainstitute-(australian-fossil-fuel-subsidies-hit-10-3-billion-in-2020-21) The tax evasion behaviour described above has been going on for decades under both Labor and the LNP. In this kind of environment, where permissive thinking undermines integrity leading to such behaviour being normalised, we should not be surprised to discover individual politicians who have been spying against us on behalf of foreign governments.

[@stangiannopoulos8537]

People need to stop voting for the 2 major parties.

[@TheAusInstitute]

The Australian Government should ensure the gas industry pays their fair share by imposing royalties on all gas extracted in Australia. Add your name to the petition: nb.australiainstitute.org.au/collect_gas_royalties

[@richardcollis5576]

This persons voice sound like she’s introducing a new story every time she asks question.

[@mkc3177]

Vote for independents next time.

[@Kataroku]

I wish he hadn't brought up the climate change argument. Right-wing voters will tune out immediately. Instead, he should have brought up the fact that gas companies also threatened to leave Norway when its government proposed a tax increase, and yet they stayed even once the tax increase had been implemented. Instead of taking money out of education to prop up healthcare (and vice-versa on rotation), we could be getting the money to fund both at the same time. These resources belong to the Australian people, not the government. Why does the government get to set the price well below what every other country in the world sells its resources for? It's criminal. If we're not getting a fair price for our gas, then leave it in the ground. It's not worth it to us Australians to have it dug up for free, processed offshore, and sold back to us at an absolute premium.

[@peterburke8650]

The east will dump Australia soon enough. We missed the boat and made gina and ziggy rich.

[@t-dog8528]

Shut them down or Nationalise them

[@SunRisingLove-wu5no]

Australia still a colony

[@Wayne-ig1il]

🦞Seismic blasting did have a impact on rock lobsters back in the early 2000s fisherman had big quota cuts millions gone and hundreds of job Bass strait Victoria already had the backside blasted out of it 🐬🐢🐳🐠🦑🦀

[@jackmasi9753]

I know you guys go after the click bait issues, but the entire Australia Institute can’t be this poorly read. As economists, you’d know the $10-$50B offshore gas projects offset their royalties on the losses the project makes while in construction. Once they make back the project cost (which is massive because these are huge complex projects), they pay royalties. While in construction, they are still paying payroll tax and they will be employing thousands of people. After payback, you get royalties and corporate tax. PRRT is a bit different to most state mining royalties - for mining royalties the standard arrangement is to pay them monthly from the first shipment even when making an operating loss. This sort of PR campaign from you guys is either negligent or dishonest.

[@therealmonty66]

You sound like youre on the oil and gas payroll. Bottom line is if we can't get net benefits leave the gas where it is. I bet the extraction industry doesn't walk away.

[@ateoforever7434]

Last year the GAS industries made a 130 Billion profit, multiplied by 10 years past....equals 1 + trillion $$$$$$$ and " they " winge about costs to set up ?????

[@jackmasi9753]

You do get net benefits. You get jobs and sell materials, then you get workers spending money and sell materials for maintenance (and get corporate and payroll tax). Then once the initial project is paid off, you get royalties. Not sure why an unsighted profit number from one year gets multiplied by 10.

[@kingsleysmith7893]

It’s the same deceit the Australia Institute uses on the fuel tax credit scheme saying it is a subsidy to the mining industry when they damn well know it isn’t. Easily the most dishonest think tank in the country

[@sspirito3130]

To put it nicely...you are full of sh. Shell, the operator of Australia’s largest-ever gas project, Gorgon, said that they never expects to pay PRRT on the project. They are so arrogant that they literally told ATO to fu off and leave them alone

[@peterschaefer2946]

so why has it taken this long for richard tell us that