Amy Remeikis

They pay corporate tax.

They are the second biggest corporate taxpayer in Australia, the resources industry.

But every industry pays tax.

One of the favourite parts for me who was watching the inquiry was that we heard a lot about the expenses of gas companies from everybody related to the gas industry, but nobody seemed to come prepared with the revenues that they make.

Nobody actually had those numbers.

Yeah, why would you need to know about revenues?

I'm sorry, I don't have it at my fingertips, Senator.

What did you think we're going to be asking you today?

I thought you were going to be asking me about tax, Senator.

Sure.

Yeah, I mean, I find this argument quite interesting because an export tax would not be paid by any of the gas resources customers.

So Japan, South Korea, America, whoever, would not be paying the export tax.

That would be paid by gas companies who would just have to basically take it from the profits that they're making.

And so the argument is that, yes, the global uncertainty and the way that we shore up these relationships with our allies is by not putting on a tax.

But again, it doesn't actually make sense when you consider the fact that none of these countries would be paying the tax themselves.

That would be paid by gas taxes.

There is also, which was raised, an argument that was raised several times by several different people that an export tax would probably also lower domestic tax prices because those companies, those smaller operators who decided that they didn't want to pay a 25% export tax would find that they would make more money selling it to the domestic market, which would increase domestic market supply, which would lower prices for Australians who are currently having to pay

international spot prices at time for their domestic gas.

So we are going to see, I think, Labor do what is being termed on social media, I've seen it a few times, as Labor always makes excuses or lame, where we've basically had Anthony Albanese come out and say that this is not something that we are considering.

But it is interesting that we are seeing some members of the caucus who are starting to worry about the government's position on this.