Written by: Max O. on 7 May 2026
The Australia Institute, Michael West Media, and the recent parliamentary inquiry into the taxation of Australia's gas resources have put gas corporations under the microscope regarding how much wealth they extract from the country's natural resources. Together with the ACTU, they are arguing for a 25 percent gas tax on exports.
However, no amount of evidence about gas corporations pillaging Australia's natural resources for virtually nothing has convinced Prime Minister Albanese of the need to tax them. He argued in the media recently, "They pay around about $22 billion … you need to acknowledge the tens of billions of dollars of investment that occurs in order to have that gas extracted. Without that investment that's come from North America, that's come from Japan … we wouldn't be having a debate because there wouldn't have been that extraction."
No hint here of "Buying back the farm" or taxing these rich corporations for looting the country's finite natural resources. Albanese's attitude once again demonstrates that our capitalist political system is administered for the benefit of overwhelmingly foreign corporations and not the Australian people.
The Australia Institute states that the Federal Government gets more revenue from beer excise and uni students repaying their HECS debts each year than it gets from its Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT).
Albanese's defence of the gas corporations belies the Australian Tax Office's depiction of the gas industry as "systemic non-payers of tax". "Many gas companies pay no company tax and no PRRT. Santos Limited, for example, has not paid any company tax on $47 billion in sales over ten years," reports the Australia Institute.
The recent wars in Ukraine and Iran have seen energy prices inflate and massive profits for the gas industry. As a result, gas companies have paid increased company tax. Nevertheless, teachers and nurses in Australia pay more in income tax than the gas industry pays in company tax and PRRT combined.
In April, two days of public hearings for a Greens-led parliamentary inquiry into the taxation of gas resources heard from advocates for a 25 per cent gas export tax and from energy corporations who argued such a tax would scare away investors. Senator for the ACT David Pocock asked Cecile Wake, CEO of Shell in Australia, how much profit and how much gas Shell exported from Australia. The inquiry meeting was left gobsmacked after Wake couldn't answer this question. However, she was certain an extra 25 per cent royalty on Australian gas would be "spectacularly ill advised".
One wonders what this Shell executive thought she might be asked at this inquiry. Or was it just a ploy to avoid answering embarrassing questions that might expose her corporation getting a free ride off Australian natural resources?
Shell's tax boss, Coralie Trotter, had to admit that it paid $109 million in PRRT in 2025 – but didn’t pay any in the decade prior. She informed the inquiry that Shell paid $2.9 billion in company tax in 2024 on $6.2 billion in after tax profits. She claimed the company had paid $12 billion in taxes in the last decade.
Then Wake pointed out that the profit would be much smaller than the revenue collected during that time, as Shell invested US$60 billion into developing gas projects, pleading: "It is not unreasonable for us to be able to recover that before you start paying a profit-based tax."
Senator Pocock quipped with a piercing reply: "Ms Wake, how come you can tell me how much you invested but not how much gas you sold? You tell us about all the investment but you're very quiet on how much gas you're actually selling."
Companies extracting and selling gas from Australia usually pay 40 per cent on the profit they make through the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT), though those profits can be offset by losses for capital expenditure.
For an industry that is considered to be worth hundreds of billions, a mere $1.5 billion was collected by the Federal Government in revenue from the PRRT in 2025. This is almost half of what the $2.7 billion beer excise tax collected
Michael West Media pointed out that "Ethical investor Future Group suggests Australia is capturing less than seven per cent of its resource rents through the PRRT, royalties and excise, much lower than comparable revenue raised in Norway, Qatar and the United Kingdom." Norway and Qatar collect far higher taxes from their gas energy industry.
In 2023, the Qatari Government collected around $56 billion in government revenue from liquified natural gas (LNG) exports. These figures show that Australia suffers a huge sovereign loss from its natural gas resources compared to other gas exporters.
Eighty per cent of Australian gas production is currently exported from Australia. Indeed, more gas is used by the gas industry to process gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG) for export than all of the gas used by Australian manufacturers.
The Australia Institute says a 25% gas export tax would collect up to $17 billion per year. Presently, the PRRT collects less than $2 billion per year. If this isn't bad enough, there are other nefarious ways that foreign energy corporations swindle Australia, as explained by the Australia Institute: "No company better illustrates the great gas rip-off than Japanese gas company INPEX. Each year, INPEX exports more gas than is used in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia combined. It sells no gas to Australians outside of emergencies. It pays no royalties, no Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT), and paid no corporate tax on $21 billion in gas exports between 2015 and 2025. I guess it's not hard to make money when Australia effectively gives you its gas for free."
In fact, you could argue that Japan is better at extracting value from Australia's gas exports than we are. Japan is on-selling the Australian gas it imports for domestic use, according to new analysis from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. It found that Japanese companies resold between $11-14 billion worth of Australian LNG in 2024, with its profits likely exceeding $1 billion – or roughly the same as Australia collects from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.
Just as serious as the loss of revenue from Australian exported gas are the environmental impacts of gas extraction and the willingness of governments to approve the exploitation of new gas fields. Climate Analytics, which argues the energy crisis presents a rare opportunity to take more ambitious action against global warming, also testified at the parliamentary inquiry. This advocacy group submitted that "It would be broadly beneficial from a climate perspective for changes in the taxation regime to support a managed decline in Australian fossil gas use." However, this group argued any changes should not just seek to capture wartime windfall profits but also drive structural changes in Australia's reliance on fossil fuels.
Capitalism in Australia, with its corporations, politicians, public service, media and think tanks, will do none of this. It will continue to exploit and condemn working people and the environment to milk every last drop of profit it can out of the country. It damns itself by its own barbarism.
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