David Pocock

That's a fact that these gas companies donate to both sides of politics.

There's a lot of jobs after politics.

Like you see resources ministers inevitably seem to go and work for a big fossil fuel company, obviously earning some pretty good coin there.

There's the lobbying, a lot of revolving door of staff members

You know, ministerial staff is going to these industries.

They've got the relationships.

They know how to work the system.

And then, as I said, these industries that carry these big sticks and they say, listen, if you do this, you know what's going to happen.

And I think half the challenge is how do we...

make it so that politicians are more afraid of the public, the people that they're meant to be working for, than they are of an industry that's really made up of these big multinational companies that have had it very good for a long time.

The one part of the argument that I want to have some sympathy for the government, although I don't think it quite stacks up, is the argument around the current fuel security issues.

And they say, well, Japan and South Korea won't sell us fuel.

Malaysia will be unhappy.

In this gas Senate inquiry, it was very clear from a couple of the witnesses, I think Chevron and Inpex, they said, listen, we're price takers, we don't set the price.

And so what you can read from that is that a 25 cent gas export tax would be absorbed by the companies that essentially be paying us for the gas.

Japan would still get the same amount of gas at the same price, but INPEX would just have to pay us.

And I think the reason why Japan and South Korea are jumping up and down about this is because they both have fairly big stakes in companies that are exploiting Australian gas.

So you look at – Japan's a great example.

I think a 20% or 30% stake in INPEX, so they make a lot of money there.

Impex, until very recently, had basically got all of its gas for free, no petroleum resource rent tax.