Earlier this month, Labor’s Resources Minister Madeleine King announced to the world The Future Gas Strategy; a political document that she claims to be driven by facts and data.
Facts are usually something that can be proven to be true. Data is a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning. Data can be shifted and changed to tell a story. Any story, really. Especially when you’re in government and trying to keep major party donors happy.
The analysis finds that over the forward estimates the Federal Government has budgeted $54 billion for fossil fuel subsidies. That number is five times the amount that it has committed to it’s housing policy, the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.
The government will continue to allow multinational companies to exploit Australian gas, use huge amounts of dirty energy to process, liquify, and ship it overseas at great expense and then the government will buy it back and ship it home.
The strategy sent the clear message to the fossil fuel industry in Australia that the Labor party will continue to let them expand their business operations. That the government still supports them. This is when climate scientists are saying the fact is that in order to keep a relatively habitable biosphere and to keep global heating to a maximum of 1.5 degrees, the data tells us we need to be phasing out of fossil fuels rapidly. No expansion of fossil fuels, no more fossil fuel projects.
To the rest of us, it sent the message that it is the fossil fuel multinationals who write national policy in Australia.
When explaining the strategy, she emphasised that Australian’s need gas to cook their meals, to heat their kitchens. Never mind that this polluting fossil fuel is linked to many physical health risks, with young and vulnerable people most at risk for developing illnesses associated with the use of gas in the home.
The government will throw buckets of cash at the fossil fuel multinationals who pay little tax, and rake in billions. How do they do it? They make their profits elsewhere, siphoning out the cash from their Australian businesses in company loans from entities overseas, in IP and service payments, in returns of capital, and by generally adding as many costs as they can to their Australian entities from their overseas entities.
The gap between the corporate rich and the working poor has never been so deep. On the average teacher’s salary, for instance, at $85,000 a year as a PAYG taxpayer, you can expect to pay 23.3 per cent tax on your income or $19,792. That’s $19,792 more than Exxon paid on its staggering sales of $97.9bn from exporting oil and gas. To still be given public money on top of paying so little is an outrage, and morally bankrupt in the time of an ever-worsening climate crisis.
Employers who only employ about 133,100 people, or one per cent of the Australian population. If any other industry polluted, cheated, and gave so little back to the people- you would hope there would be mass protesting of the betrayal.
For the fossil fuel industry, state and federal governments will offer tax breaks totalling hundreds of millions of dollars, insulating them from the risk of their investment. This is supposedly for the benefit of the country.
“Gas will remain an important source of energy through to 2050 and beyond,” King said, as if using fossil fuels beyond 2050 does not condemn millions of people around the world to death and destruction. As if the bushfires and floods of recent years hasn’t rendered the cruelty of the generous tax subsidies to these corporations in ultra-high definition.
We need to transition to net zero, and we allegedly need to expand the already massive use of gas in Australia in order to do so. In other words, there is not enough political will from the ruling party to do what is needed, and they will instead pander to the vested interests of those who wish to do the opposite of what the scientific consensus says we must do. This is how we do things. But the facts are that gas supplies 27 per cent of Australia’s energy needs and 14 per cent of its export income, with 90 per cent of national supply exported overseas. There is more than enough gas in Australia to support a rapid energy transition to renewables.
I cannot fathom how we rationalise this arrangement. Why should the fossil fuel corporations wield such power? Why should anyone profit off the demise of this beautiful planet that we are so lucky to call our home in this brief window of time? In a country as vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as ours, why do the political class only focus on the short-term benefits of their arrangement with the fossil fuel cartel?
A healthy climate is a human right. Now is the time to demand a fossil fuel proliferation treaty, a safe and habitable climate for every person, an end to fossil fuel subsidies.
The problem is not that fossil fuels exist, but the system itself.
$54 billion could freeze rent payments for people with insufficient means. $54 billion could expand crises services, social housing, rent assistance and establish rent controls. $54 billion could nationalise housing. $54 billion could permanently raise the jobseeker rate, which is the lowest in the OECD. $54 billion could properly fund mental health in Medicare, and allow people to bulk bill their mental health treatment. $54 billion could be invested in making childcare free in Australia.
Australia is one of the most affluent countries in the world, but where the money is allocated tells you a lot about what is deemed to be important- and what only gets lip service.
The government does not have the political will to make the necessary changes. In their messaging, climate change is awful but not so terrible that we cannot live with it. Climate change persists so fossil fuel corporations can make a return on their investment. The blunt force trauma of climate change lands hardest on young people, women, First Nations communities, the disabled, and people from rural areas.
It is taxpayers who foot the bill for fossil fuel projects. We absorb the cost of the expansion, and the continued extraction of natural resources. A stable and habitable climate is a seemingly impossible extravagance, while the billions in tax breaks for fossil fuel corporations are a given. Those least in need of assistance receive benefits while everyone else gets the scraps.
Climate change is the sign of Australia’s policies and tax system working as intended. Austerity, capitalism, free-market economics, neoliberalism – the system preferences profit over people. The extraction and continued burning of natural resources at the current rate is madness. We can continue to deny the fundamental right in the name of so-called prosperity for the mere few at the expense of the rest of us, or we can imagine a future where a just transition means the worst of the climate crisis is avoided.
Now is the time to push for change and include in our demands an end to fossil fuel subsidies. If the Australian Tax office records prove anything, it is that the fossil fuel corporations can certainly afford it.
Carly Dober is a psychologist in clinical practice and the director of the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc.