It’s likely much will be said, but little done, at next week’s economic roundtable. With the budget expected to be in continuing deficit, Anthony Albanese won’t be able to splash out. But much could be done to spread the costs of government more fairly.

While young people are being charged an astonishing $50,000 for an arts degree, it’s a little-noticed fact that the government is providing much of our natural gas to multinational companies free of charge.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

Australia has become one of the world’s biggest exporters of gas in recent decades, up there with the United States and Qatar. The world price of gas jumped in February 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The sad story of our misadventures in ensuring the nation benefits from the export of its gas is told in a report by the Australia Institute. To be exported, natural gas has to be liquified. We’ve built 10 liquefaction plants, five in Western Australia, three in Queensland and two in the Northern Territory.

Like all natural resources in the ground, gas is owned by the government. Businesses that wish to extract it have to buy it by paying a “royalty” to the government. Royalty for gas from onshore fields is paid to the state government, as in Queensland.

But gas from offshore fields in Commonwealth waters is the responsibility of the federal government. So the WA and NT plants should buy their gas from the Commonwealth. With one exception, however, the feds don’t levy royalty. Rather, they impose a “petroleum resource rent tax” on the exporters’ profits in lieu of........

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