Life on the West Island - Crumbling pillars of truth

This week saw a significant defeat for the West Island’s extractive coal, gas and oil industries. For years, they have propped up the major political parties (especially the Nationals) with huge political donations. Their highly-paid lobbyists are everywhere in Canberra, opposing measures to limit climate change, justifying their non-payment of taxes and claiming that their industries are the core pillars of the national economy. But just lately, the lobbyists have found that they are not in Parliament House’s lobbies – they are outside the building in the cold, looking wistfully but impotently on as events pass them by.

On Thursday, the federal government outflanked them by securing the passage through parliament of its unamended energy package, aimed at lowering the cost of energy for consumers and industries by capping the prices paid to domestic producers of coal and gas. This was despite the shrill and, at times, hysterical screams of the extractive industries and the opposition.

Prime Minister Albanese told Sky News that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, noting further that the Sunak government in the United Kingdom has been prepared to pursue essentially a super profits tax that they are then using to rebate households and businesses in the energy sector. By comparison, this is a very modest package - a modest intervention that’s required because of the extraordinary circumstances.

In light of the opposition’s fierce attack on the package, Mr Albanese added I was somewhat stunned, frankly, that Peter Dutton and the opposition were prepared to vote today for higher power prices for both businesses and for households.

In fact, the coalition’s senior spokespeople were almost incandescent in their descriptions of the legislation. Opposition leader Peter Dutton called it catastrophic and a massive con job.

Echoing the hysterical “end of the weekend” claims about electric vehicles by the former Prime Minister, coalition leader in the senate Bridget McKenzie frothed at the mouth with unfounded over-the-top claims about the effects of the cap on gas prices:

So you’re going to have Bowen and Bandt rocking up at your door (knock, knock, knock, on the lectern), spanners in hand. Let me take out your cooktop and your gas heater. Ah, there goes the BBQ. If you’ve got a gas bottle in the shed because you like to go camping on the weekends, they’re going to take that away as well.

Lost in the mists of the debate was the ridiculous claim by giant gas producer Santos that the price caps were Soviet-style policy. This shows the extent to which the mining industries are prepared to go to protect their super profits from extracting oil, gas and coal which are assets belonging to all West Islanders but are obtained by them essentially for free by digging holes or drilling wells.

Under the heading Fake News Harms Democracy, the Australia Institute has studied public sources to examine the overblown claims of the mining and resource extraction industries that they are the major pillars propping up the West Island economy.

This includes the claim by the Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association (AREEA) that the mining industries employ an estimated one million West Islanders. But the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures show only 266,300 employees across the whole mining sector, with just 43,700 in coal mining and 21,200 in oil and gas.

Overall the Australia Institute concludes that the resource industry loves fake news and fears debate fuelled by facts. The last things they want the Australian public to know are:

• According to the ABS, 98% of workers don’t work in the mining industry. The entire mining industry employs just 2% of the workforce, including coal mining which employs just 0.3% and oil and gas extraction employing 0.2%.
• According to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), more than half of the major mining, energy and water companies paid no company tax in 2020/21.
• The resources sector is the major source of greenhouse gas emissions growth in Australia, with gas emissions alone rising 137% since 2005. (Source: Dr Hugh Saddler, Australian Energy Emissions Monitor.)
• ATO figures show that the resources sector contributed just 8% of Commonwealth income tax in 2020/21 and 5% of total government revenue in Australia.
  
  

Despite alarming statistics such as these, the mining lobby attempted to launch a savage campaign against the Albanese government’s energy package, claiming that it would cause the collapse of the gas industry and wreck the entire economy. It made similar claims in 2006 when the Western Australian government introduced price caps on gas and required that a minimum of 15% of gas production be reserved for local consumption. In fact, investment and production boomed and gas prices in that state have since remained the lowest in the country, leading the WA budget to enjoy successive surpluses and consumers to enjoy the cheapest power prices in the nation.

There is no credible independent evidence that the West Island federal government’s energy package would bring about the collapse of the economy, as claimed by the opposition and its friends in the mining industry. Instead, the miners have come up against a parliament determined to rein in their windfall profits and to provide cost of living relief for the community.

The events of this week cap a year when the incoming West Island government has surprised most of us by being able to implement its major election promises and to modify the damaging effects on our cost of living, mostly brought about by international events. By contrast, the opposition has relapsed into negative culture wars, making itself largely irrelevant in tackling the huge challenges facing the nation. These trends are likely to see the continuing loss of “progressive conservative” voters to minor parties and independents in coming years.

As well, the West Island mining sector has seen the crumbling of its ill-founded assertion that it is one of the major pillars of employment and public revenues. Truth-telling might be gaining a foothold in Canberra…