On Thursday, at its national conference the ALP will vote to change its platform to include a pledge to deliver a fair return on Australia’s natural resources.

The proposal is that the platform includes the lines:

“Labor will ensure that the Australian people receive a fairer return from their natural resources including through appropriate taxation arrangements, while securing Australia’s role as a reliable international energy supplier and investment partner.”

The language is a bit “all things to all people”, but it clearly relates to better taxing gas – essentially to implement the ACTU’s proposal of a 25% tax on gas exports.

Right now, Australia is the second biggest exporter of LNG in the world, behind only the US and ahead of Qatar. Twenty-five years ago, LNG exports accounted for just 2% of all goods exported from Australia; now it’s about 12%.

Such a boom should deliver a similar soaring of tax revenue via the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT), which was set up in the 1980s to tax oil and gas profits.

But no. In 2025-26, Australia exported $52.6bn more LNG than 25 years earlier (a lazy 1,968% increase), but the government raised $979m less PRRT (a 41% drop):

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We haven’t even had a decent increase from royalties in the same way we did from the iron ore boom, because 56% of LNG exports come from royalty-free gas – because it is........

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