Keep the Bastards Honest
‘Keep the Bastards Honest’ - do you know the line?
It was famously said by Don Chipp, Inaugural leader of The Australian Democrats.
AD were a political party that held the balance of power in the Australian Federal Senate through the early 2000s and “ideologically, were usually occupying the political middle ground between the Liberal Party and the Labor Party” (wiki).
So, who’s being dishonest?
“.. According to the Australian Government’s Future Gas Strategy, gas is “critical” to the nation’s economy.
In view of this, many Australians might be surprised to learn that a large amount of the country’s gas reserves are essentially being given away for free.
Australia has ten facilities that export gas as liquified natural gas (LNG).
Six of these projects—four of the five operating in Western Australia, along with both of the Northern Territory’s facilities—pay no royalties, either state or federal.
These facilities represent 56% of Australia’s gas export capacity.
This means that more than half the gas exported from Australia is given for free to the companies exporting it.
The monetary value of this gas is enormous.
The total value of LNG exports over the last four years is estimated at $265 billion.
Exports of LNG based on royalty-free gas were valued at a total of $149 billion.
To put this another way: in the last four years alone, Australians have given away the gas that made $149 billion worth of LNG, for free.
$111 billion worth of this royalty-free LNG was produced in Western Australia.
The billions of dollars in forgone revenue each year from effectively giving away Australian gas for free could be invested in a sovereign wealth fund (as it is in Norway) or used to raise productivity and increase living standards of Australians by funding schools, hospitals, renewable energy, and other needed public infrastructure.
The gas industry does not make a fair contribution to the community.
The Australia Institute recommends:
Read more in ‘Australia’s Great Gas Giveaway (report)’
***
So I posit to you, when we consider things like the implementation of Robodebt, targetting the most vulnerable in our community to recover tax, that had outcomes such as;
“the cavalier adoption of digitisation for debt recovery between 2014 and 2019 without regard to legality, resulted in the raising of 794,000 false and unlawful debts, against approximately 526,000 recipients at a staggering cost to revenue of AUD $1.751 billion.
.. these entailed adverse credit rating risks, jeopardised admission to practice in professions such as law, and in at least some instances led people to suicide as found by the Royal Commission, and that only 5 in 10,000 managed to obtain access to justice”
领英推荐
.. we are failing at keeping the bastard honest.
Question: Do you care? Who can you discuss this with? Will you?
Reaping what we sow
It saddens that nearly everyone I’ve met over the past two decades in public service at state or federal levels are effectively gagged from speaking out about these issues at risk of losing their livelihoods.
It ensures there is a Berlin Wall style seperation between those who know what’s going on in the machinery and the public, though seeing Dr Monique Ryan up there with Senator David Pocock, another independent, and Richard Denniss and Mark Ogge from The Australian Institute did inspire me!
Be the change as it were:
And thus.. incompetitive markets
A colleague was highlighting another call for us to “have an honest debate about inflation and the causes of the financial pain many households are currently feeling” - particularly how the rise of mums and dads stealing in supermarkets is on the rise in response.
They pointed to Robert Reich, speaking to where the science of true and real competitive markets have been lost to the lobbyists, politics and corporate giants - as we "ignor[e] the deeper structural reason for price increases: the concentration of... economy into the hands of a few corporate giants with the power to raise prices".
Add in Matt Grudnoff - senior economist at the The Australia Institute, calling Australian's to " have an honest debate about inflation and the causes of the financial pain many households are currently feeling".
Which takes us back to gas scams, media monopolies and silo’d debate.
For the most part, the true crux of systemic financial injustice in Australia is ignored in the business environments I've spent my life in.
Though it is showing up in various places online, and if you want to hear what a younger generation is tapping into, where these conversations are ignored or watered down in traditional media, you can look to:
***
The despair in those that missed the asset boom of the 80-90's and aren't set to inherit is deep and existential, and if you consider the generation left behind as fuel stock, our collective inability to hold to account rampant systemic inequality is throwing matches onto the tinder of our society.
Thanks for your time! If you value this please share the love by spreading the message, you can also click like and let me know in a comment.