A simpler way to raise revenue and pay for things than the Coalition’s new mining-windfall-thingy-tax-diversion-magic would be to just stop giving away gas.

We estimated recently that if the Commonwealth just charged existing royalty rates on all the gas it gives away, it could raise $3.6b/year.

There’s no reason existing rates couldn’t be increased by 50% to raise $6.9 billion/year.

This could pay for things immediately rather than based on future maybe-interest from some difficult-to-understand fund.