Stephen Mayne

Unlike a full-blown climate catastrophe.

So he's – I think Mark's saying – Oh, unlike.

Oh, I see.

We can pivot with the energy shock.

We can pivot to renewables, but we can't pivot away from a full-blown climate catastrophe, which is a fair point.

What about the gas tax?

Have you been following this massive gas tax debate that the Greens and Senator Pocock, you know, we should be taxing all our gas exports a flat 25%?

I don't know.

I think they just want to shut the whole industry down, don't they?

That's what Angus Taylor has accused them of.

Well, I think the government's pretty much ruled it out now in terms of – because of the – it wouldn't be a good look with fuel prices through the roof to be suddenly jacking up taxes on the gas company.

So I think they've ruled it out for the budget.

But it is an interesting long-term debate.

I personally think it's actually the gold miners and the iron ore miners who are grossly undertaxed because the state royalties –

in wa in particular are so low you know two and a half percent for gold and seven percent roughly for iron ore and that's why you've got you know three families the forests the reinhardts and clive palmer worth what 120 billion all based on under taxed iron ore in wa you look at the economics of the gas companies and it's not the same there haven't been the same super profits

But I guess a lot of them are multinationals, and so they're all panicking and running up to the Senate and talking about how much tax they've paid over the last few years.

So it is an interesting debate.

They've run a good campaign, the Australian Institute, and Adam Bant was giving evidence yesterday.

They've run a very effective campaign, but I don't think the government seems to be saying they're not going to actually move on it this time.

Now, staying with the budget, Mark says, there's currently a lot of noise regarding the current 50% capital gains tax discount for assets sold after 12 months.