Australians have had it with mining companies. A gas exports tax is inevitable

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Sometimes, the imperatives of policy and politics refuse to align. That’s one way of understanding Australia’s journey with taxing its natural resources. If ever there was a favourable time for this policy, it was during the mining boom of the Rudd-Gillard years. The Henry tax review had recommended the tax after the surging price of iron and coal delivered mining companies huge super-profits.

But the politics proved unconquerable. The Coalition ran unanimously and vehemently against it, while the resource sector pumped tens of millions of dollars into an advertising campaign. The basic argument, that this would be a dead weight on the nation’s prosperity, proved persuasive. The episode was one of the key reasons for Kevin Rudd’s sudden demise. Julia Gillard’s passed a watered-down version that raised a fraction of what the government forecast before the Abbott government repealed it entirely.

Today, the politics look transformed. At issue this time is tax on gas exports. What once devolved into a crude left-right war cannot be so neatly categorised now. Naturally, the Greens still support it, and have just led a parliamentary committee on the idea. But Andrew Hastie, the Coalition’s industry and sovereign capability spokesperson who is widely tipped to be the next Liberal leader, has repeatedly signalled his openness to the idea. He has explicitly declared multinational companies such as these resources giants have lost their “social licence”.

Polling shows support for a gas export tax is strong across the partisan........

© Brisbane Times