The Opposition Leader is asked how his plan for a domestic gas reserve would get gas to Victoria:

We want to see more gas coming into the system, increasing the supply mystically. We have got $1 billion as part of our package to increase capacity. There is a business case for many of these pipelines to be built or, indeed, to be expanded. If we can create greater capacity, we can get it to market. There are storage issues here in Victoria at the moment. The Labor Party has done here in Victoria with the Prime Minister and Jacinta Allan is create a gas crisis. Drawings of the biggest users of gas in the country, many people have heating systems in their own homes. There is a vibrant manufacturing industry in the state, or there was double the Labor Party it. I want to rebuild manufacturing in Victoria. I want to grow jobs in factories like this … I will make sure we can provide support with a gas policy to bring the cost of things down across the economy.

Australia is one of the largest exporters of mineral resources in the world, but Australians have never received their fair share of the profits from selling those resources.

Peter Dutton is right to say Australia needs to bank the windfall profits the mining industry makes when global commodity prices soar.

However, Australia cannot build a sovereign wealth fund like Norway, unless Australia taxes resources the way Norway does.

Australia Institute research shows Australia currently gives away more than half the gas we export for free, with zero royalties paid on 56 per cent of all the gas we sell overseas.

Peter Dutton has rightfully acknowledged Australia has an abundance of gas, and his idea to tax gas exports to ensure our gas flows first to Australian businesses and households is a good idea and big shift in the debate.

“The offshore gas industry has never paid a cent of Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. Imagine if Australia started charging foreign companies for the resources we give them and spent that money looking after Australians,” said Richard Denniss, Executive Director of The Australia Institute.

“In Norway they tax their fossil fuel industries and give their kids free university education, while in Australia we give our gas away for free and charge our kids a fortune to go to universities.

“Australians do need a better deal from all the resources we export, but we won’t get a good deal until we have a good tax system”.

Glen Connley is the one who will guide you through this one – Sussan Ley is there with the campaign in Aston (which the Liberals have all but won back).

We haven’t seen anything from AAP about Dutton’s campaign today, but Albanese is on a boat in far north Queensland living his best life it seems.

He is being interviewed by a Sky reporter who asks him if he will keep his hat given the winds “it’s a vibe,” the PM says.

The boat is tossing around so much that the reporter looks like he might be sick over the prime minister, but the real hero of this is the Sky camera operator who is keeping that shot STEADY.

In terms of what is being said, it was everything that was said in the press conference about an hour or so ago, but now he is saying it on a boat.

Good news! Eastern suburbs private school Scots College will this week unveil their new $60 million faux baronial castle.

This line in the article is particularly hilarious

“Delays were blamed on acquiring sandstone slates from Scotland while architects toured Edinburgh to visit buildings designed by architect David Bryce in the planning stages. The cost of the total project was about double the original $29 million price tag.”

Our research: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/taxpayers-subsidising-private-school-luxuries/

• Tax deductions for private school building funds should be removed, as recommended by the Productivity Commission.
• Four in five Australians agree that private school facilities should be accessible to community groups outside of school hours if taxpayers are funding their construction. 

Alexia op ed: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/private-schools-public-subsidies/

In 2024, the Commonwealth Government will spend an estimated $29.1 billion on schools in Australia. More than half of this – $17.8 billion – will go to private schools, including those with Olympic sized indoor swimming pools (Cranbrook and Knox Grammar as well as many others), in-house baristas (Knox Grammar again), and those with an already extensive list of sporting fields and amenities, including on-site physiotherapy facilities (here’s looking at you, The Kings School and Trinity Grammar).

With some private schools in Sydney charging more than $50,000 per student this year, how can this be justified?

In addition to direct government funding, private schools take donations to their building funds, which are tax deductible. For some schools, these funds accumulate millions of dollars. At the risk of repetition – collectively, private schools get more Commonwealth funding than public schools. Could this help explain why enrolments in private schools are rising faster than enrolments in public schools? Is it surprising that parents want to take advantage of the tax-payer subsidised opportunity these facilities provide?

…
Australia’s education system is unbalanced. It disproportionately favours those who are already advantaged. It gives public money and tax concessions to private schools that end up going to private beneficiaries. Already wealthy schools do not need a leg-up from the taxpayer. It’s fine for private schools to have building funds and ask for donations, but public money could be better spent on public schools. Removing the tax subsidies given to building funds would help support equity in school funding, instead of undermining it.

Here is a bit more from Wong:

Well, there’s no question we live in an era, an era of great power competition. And I think you only need to look at some of the comments that have been made to demonstrate that. And there’s also no question that in a world where people don’t want tariffs, the President’s pause on the imposition of higher tariffs and the imposition of lower tariffs is has been received much more positively than than the alternative.

So you know, what can Australia do? We can continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is to advocate for open, fair, free trade, because that has been benefit to us economically and in terms of our power in the region, and to work with others to continue to keep markets open, to continue to try and diversify exports. That’s what our government is doing.

And on Peter Dutton’s approach, Wong said:

What we what we will do is stand on our own two feet. We stand on our own two feet, and we engage with countries in our national interest, and we look to further our national interest in relation to all countries. And we think our national interest requires us to diversify, continue to diversify our export markets, continue to work on resourcing and investing in a range of relationships.

That is what that is, what the Albanese government has been doing for the last three years stands in stark contrast with Peter Dutton. Mr Dutton is lost in our region. Mr Dutton gave a speech just recently billed as his big foreign policy speech.

He did not mention India, he did not mention Japan, he did not mention Korea. He did not mention Indonesia or any country within Southeast Asia, and he did not mention ASEAN.

Now, if you’re serious about Australia’s resilience in a world which is uncertain, in a world where we see increasing tariffs and counter tariffs, one of the things you have to do is to ensure you invest in and resource and build your other diplomatic and economic relationships throughout the Indo Pacific. Albanese’s Labor government’s been doing that. Peter Dutton is lost when it comes to our region.

Penny Wong is addressing the Trump tariff’s on Sky News and she says:

In terms of Australia’s position. We are prepared to engage. We are not prepared to give ground on the issues, what the which the administration has indicated they are seeking us to compromise on. We are not going to compromise on the PBS, and we’re not going to be compromising on Australia’s biosecurity regime. So I can’t be clearer than that

Skye Predavec

It’s funny that we call single-party government “majority” government, because no one party or coalition has won a majority of the first-preference or primary vote since 1975.

In 2022, the Labor Government received just 33% of the primary vote – but won a majority of the seats. In Australia’s single-member electorate system, a minority of votes easily becomes a majority of seats.

New Zealand adopted proportional representation in 1996 after an election where a majority government formed with a record low vote share of just 35%. Since then, most of its governments have formed from parties that won a majority of the vote.

In the 2023 New Zealand election, the incoming three-party coalition of Nationals, ACT, and NZ First had 53% of the vote between them. Another proportional system (Hare-Clark) is employed for elections in Tasmania and the ACT, where governments generally have the support of half or more of the primary vote.

While no Australian government has won a majority of the primary vote since 1975, the Gillard government was in some ways the closest to it.

Only 38% of Australians voted for Gillard’s Labor in 2010, but 13% voted for the Greens and independents who made formal confidence and supply agreements with the government.

That makes the 2010 election is the only time since 1975 where confidence in the government was based on MPs receiving the votes of most Australians.

… the piss!!

Peter Dutton has it half right on gas. There is no supply shortage, but Australians need to be using less gas – not more.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Rod Campbell and Mark Ogge join Ebony Bennett to discuss the fixing Australia’s gas export problem, making gas companies pay their fair share in taxes and royalties, and why there is no need for new gas projects.

According to the Financial Review the Coalition will set up two new funds, a Future Generation Fund and a Regional Australia Future Fund. These will be financed by “80 per cent of positive windfall commodity receipts each year”.

Now just what that means is a bit confused. But it appears to mean to be the difference between what the Budget estimates company tax revenue from mining companies will be will be and what it ends up being.

The amounts are large but not that large – the Budget Papers show that every US$10 under-estimate of the iron ore price gives a A$0.4 billion revenue windfall in the first year, $0.5 billion in years 2 and 3 and then $2.1 billion in year 4. Significant but not a big deal in a budget with expected tax revenue of almost $700 million in 2025-26 and over that in subsequent years.

The Coalition says it wants to return the deficit to surplus and then put money in the new funds. The sorts of money we are talking about are not going to go very far towards the projected deficits of $42 billion in 2025-26 and a bit under $40 billion in subsequent years. So the funds are going to have to wait a long time before there is anything in them. And longer still before the funds make an income that can be distributed.

Angus Taylor said the wants to finance stronger regional communities. If so it’s a bit of a joke making the regions wait until the budget is in surplus. If stronger regional communities are a genuine priority they should be funded as a matter of priority.

Remember Australia’s projected deficits (max 1.5% GDP) are piddling compared with other OECD countries such as the US 6.6%, Britain 5.5% and the Euro area 3.3%.