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Labor vows to listen to voters after One Nation's historic WA upset (www.sbs.com.au)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/australianpolitics@aussie.zone
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[–] -2 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Most gas is already under contract. Breaking those contracts would massively hurt our economy and those contracts would get reinstated in court anyway. Some gas isn't under contract but the money we'd raise from it isn't that much anyway, especially as (ideally) the world moves away from fossil fuels.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    If the contracts are a complete rort then I say we scrap 'em. Be the sovereign risk the investors should have taken into account investing into such an unfair arrangement...

    Or even given some nominal compensation where they are made whole, accounting for inflation, but not profit.

    These are our own resources we're talking about. Legal arguments are a cop out when the law is set up to favour private property at the expense of the rest of us.

    We most certainly can scrap bullshit contracts, signed by politicians who then go on to be employed by those same companies. It may not legally be corruption, but it is corruption.

    We have 100% moral cover to tell these companies to get fucked, and we should do it.

    What are they gonna do? Stop investing in extracting our gas resources and paying hardly any tax or royalties on it? OH NoOoOoOoOoO. What ever shall we do‽‽‽

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Sovereign risk affects all industries, not just the gas industry. "Moral cover" counts for nothing.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    We have resources. Would we lose some international investment? Maybe. But time and time again modest tax reform doesn't lead to capital flight in the way capitalists claim.

    And even if we don't want to rip up contracts (though we should when they're clearly unfair), there's no excuse for not progressively instituting new tax and royalties settings as they expire.

    And yet, the Labor government won't, because they're corrupt and bought by the gas industry (not in a legal sense, but in reality).

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  • [–] 1 point 14 hours ago

    The tax reforms are modest, but the precedent ripping up contracts because we've retroactively decided they're unfair isn't. We could raise slightly more revenue from tax on future projects but gas is on the decline anyway and Australian gas isn't that profitable. The political capital would be far better spent on something with bigger positive impacts for our economy like a land value tax (assuming there's any politcal capital to spend, since Labor already spent all of the 2025-2028 political capital on reforming negative gearing).

    As for Labor being corrupt. Have they been personally enriching themselves? Taking bribes? No. They're doing what they're doing because it's in the best interest of the country, and because it helps them get re-elected. Don't dilute the term corruption, what you're seeing is just politics. Corruption is what you see from the LNP and One Nation.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Breaking those contracts would massively hurt our economy

    Staying in them is massively hurting our economy too. Surely breaking them sooner than later is better in the long run.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Most gas is already under contract. Breaking those contracts would massively hurt our economy

    Nah fuck that. There aren't alternatives they can reasonably turn to. The only thing hurting our economy is allowing companies to steal from the Australian people without paying for our resources.

    Courts can't overturn it if Parliament enacts a law specifically saying they can do it. There's certainly nothing in the constitution that would prevent this.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    What'd hurt the economy isn't losing the gas industry, it's losing all the other industries that depend on the government not tearing up contracts already signed for a quick buck.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    If the AUKUS flip-flop didn't do it, there's zero chance that requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a fair price in a situation where the entire world knows they're currently being allowed to rip us all off will have any impact on other industries.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Does the gas lobby pay you for your comment?

    Not letting gas extractors take our gas for free and sell it oversees for huge profit will hurt the economy? I very much doubt that. It might hurt the profit of some gas companies. It might hurt say Japan, who manages to take our tax free gas and then on sell it with their own govt tax added on the international market.

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