Clare Armstrong

the tax is such a disincentive to invest that you could actually scare away future gas investment.

Look, it's a bit complicated.

Angus Taylor definitely has a view that he's applying across a whole range of proposals at the moment, which is if you tax something, you get less of it.

He thinks that particularly in the context of the energy crisis we're experiencing is not the way to go.

And that, I think, that context is important to where Anthony Albanese sits.

He's made a really big point of saying that when Australia signs a contract, that we honour that, that we're a trustworthy trade partner.

And I think that goes to the idea that he's not so in favour of a change that would suddenly affect contracts that already exist.

Mm-hm.

I do think he has left the door open to doing something in the future on contracted gas or new projects that obviously don't have deals and arrangements in place.

So I think the PM's position is more of a not now at this time rather than a not ever.

Yeah, so Woodside have argued that a 25% flat tax would effectively kill its Browse gas project off the West Australian coast.

And Premier Roger Cook has said he doesn't support it because he thinks it would be particularly bad for Western Australia.

And critically, he has made those views very clear to the Prime Minister, who, of course, sits in the Lodge currently in no small part, thanks to the voters of Western Australia, who have swung in hard behind Labor in the last two elections.

I think if we were not in the position we are with the current oil crisis, it would almost be a fait accompli that the government would be moving to do something on taxation of gas.

In the last term, Treasury prepared three kind of options of how to strengthen the PRRT.

It was pretty broadly agreed that it wasn't very effective.

The government at the time essentially chose the sort of lower, weaker of the three options.

I think we are still in the realm, you know, don't quote me three weeks out from budget, of there potentially being a world in which the government revisits a couple of those stronger other options because it really has grabbed hold of the public's imagination.

And it would be, I think, a missed opportunity for the government not to capitalise on that in some way.