More on Gas'

Are we the people of Australia ,the greatest benefactors to the world of extraction industries..Undoubtedly we appear to be.

From an article by professor John Hewson in this weeks "The Saturday Paper" we hear so many facts about the way our successive governments have mislead us. Once again he quotes from "The Australia Instsitute" the fact the country's gas exports have been given to multnational corporations =royalty free. Over the past four years $149 billion of Australian gas exports have come from projects that paid $0 royalties . That is six of this countrys ten export facilities have paid no royalties as opposed to about $13.3 billion royalty revenue not recieved over the past four years. By the way these same corporations paid no petroleum resource rent tax . Data collected from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, suggests that personal tax to australia's teachers has raised almost double of that raised by those same gas companies, over the past five years.

The issue is much broader than just tax. Our governments pay subsidies to the fossil fuel companies amounting to tens of billions of dollars.

Other major global players such as Norway, Britain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all extract far more taxes from their gas industries. Qatar alone collects about 20 times more tax revenue from its gas industry than Australia does.

Surely questions need be asked of our successive governments as to how and why they have signed such munificent deals with these huge multinational corporations. I'll bet each party benefitted financialy.

A parliament of independent members supported and answerable only to their individual electorate, would ensure that decisions made in parliamnent,were always in the interests of the nation.

www.movementforbettergovernment.com.au