Cecile Wake is Shell Australia country chair and executive vice president Integrated Gas Australia. She has pumped more industry propaganda at The AFR:
This year alone, Australia’s natural gas industry will deliver $21.9 billion in taxes and royalties—on par with the nation’s biggest banks and miners. But this success story is under threat.
Queensland LNG projects now fuel 40% of Australia’s east coast gas needs. But with traditional gas basins in decline and new exploration effectively banned for much of the past decade in Victoria and NSW, we face a stark choice: unlock new gas or continue to redistribute a finite supply. The latter outcome would undermine investment and risk energy security and progress in our energy transition.
This is rubbish. The tax paid by the East Coast gas cartel is all but zero.
QLD makes about $1bn in royalties per annum, and that’s about it. If it applied the coal regime to gas, the number would rise by as much as 500%.
When one considers that, since the cartel’s birth, domestic gas prices have gone up 400-500%, doubling electricity bills, the whole thing becomes a complete joke.
The East Coast cartel is an economic parasite without equal. It employs virtually nobody. Hollows out the local economy, especially industry. Causes immense domestic inflation. Pays minimal tax. And sends all the gas to China, which sends it back as warships.
There is only one solution for this kind of catastrophic failed market, and it is not “give it more gas”.
It is savage antitrust action that breaks the cartel.
