Opposition leader Peter Dutton has launched a new gas policy, which, superficially, appears tostand up tothe gas corporations but does the opposite.
He wants to force gas companies to increase their supply to the domestic market, his rationale being that this will drive down retail prices.
The gas corporations are, which adds to the impression that Dutton really is concerned about standing up for consumers’ interests againstbig business.
Labor is countering that its , introduced in 2022, has a similar effect and pointed out the Coalition voted against it.
Prime Minister Anthony AlbaneseInsiderson March 30 that Labor has “secured six times more gas than what Peter Dutton committed to securing on Thursday night”.
Neither major party wants to stop gas mining and both are failing to take the necessary action to avert climate disaster.
They and the big gas companies are taking us for a ride!
Around 80% of Australia’s gas is exported and, as The Australia Institute (TAI), more than half (56%) of that gas attracts zero royalty payments. It effectively gives a public resource to multinational gas corporations for free, TAI said.
There is no reason for ordinary workers to be paying such high prices.
Oliver Yates wrote in in 2020 that the problem began with privatisation in the 1990s. Bipartisan support for putting a national resource in private hands with little regulation meant, or course, that private companies looked for higher prices and profits. There was also no requirement to safeguard national supply.
Yates said most state-owned gas businesses were sold off and all natural gas distribution and transmission systems were opened to competition. The arrangement was marketed as “ensur[ing] Australia had a well developed and competitive gas industry”.
The gas industry giants, chasing profits, arranged their business model towards the export market instead of local supply, which included a push for destructive unconventional gas fracking.
This is why the gas companies have created a myth that, at least on the East Coast, supply is on the verge of running out. It’s a preposterous idea.
in March shows that this notion is bolstered by media scare campaigns.
Economist John Quigginthat energy privatisation is “a failed policy” and that it is time to reverse course.
To the extent that Australia needs gas, the problems of price and supply would best be solved by bringing the industry (and the entire energy sector) into public ownership and running it as a public service.
An even more important reason to bring the energy sector (including gas) into public ownership is to manage a rapid, effective and fair transition to 100% renewable energy.
Liberal Senator James Patterson came clean on Insiderson March 30 the Coalition wants to increase the “size of the pie” — promote more gas mining for the domestic and export markets.
Dutton’s talk about lowering prices for consumers is a cover for the Coalition’s plans to increase fossil fuel (especially gas) extraction.
Their ill-conceived and unpopular nuclear plan is also motivated by the same desire: to assist the fossil fuel sector to continue producing carbon pollution.
It is the opposite of climate action.
Labor’s record is also clear: it supportsexpandinggas (and coal) production not as a “transition” measure, but as an end in itself. Despite winning in 2022 promising to act on the climate and fix the broken environment laws, it has retreated under corporate pressure.
Our lives could be a lot easier, cheaper on the cost-of-living front, and more secure with a safer climate if we reject the major parties’ pro-business policies.
鶹ýaims to punch a hole in the lies of the corporate media, politicians and big corporations. That’s why we focus on promotingthat take us beyond the capitalist hellscape we seem to be trapped in.
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[ is running for the seat of Rankin, Queensland, for the Socialist Alliance.]