Greens’ $500 gas gift for Christmas

Queenslanders will get a $500 Christmas cash bonus under a Greens plan to raise royalties on gas companies.

Queenslanders will get a $500 Christmas cash bonus under a Greens plan to raise royalties on gas companies.

The Greens will introduce a Bill to state parliament on Wednesday proposing to give every adult Queenslander $500 in cost-of-living relief before Christmas by trebling how much gas companies pay in royalties when the sale price hits the highest tier.

As it stands, the highest royalty tier imposed on gas kicks in once the price goes above $8 per gigajoule or $14 per gigajoule depending on how the gas is classified.

But the plan is improbable as it would require parliament, in its final sitting days of 2022, to agree to fast-track the Bill and let it skip the usual bureaucratic safeguards.

South Brisbane MP Amy MacMahon said Queenslanders were feeling the pinch of rising energy bills, increasing food prices and stagnant wages while gas companies raked in billions of dollars in extra profits.

Queensland Greens MP Amy MacMahon. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

The recent federal budget revealed that households may be whacked with a 56 per cent increase in power bills over the next two years amid rising gas prices.

Queensland was set to rake in $1.6bn in 2022-23 according to Treasury forecasts, and the Greens estimate its proposal would bring in an extra $2bn – enough to give every adult Queenslander $500.

“We want to make gas corporations pay a fair royalty rate on their mega profits, to ensure that every Queensland adult gets a $500 cost-of-living payment,” Ms MacMahon said.

“If the Treasurer Cameron Dick has the courage to take on the coal companies, and raise coal royalties, he can take on these ludicrously wealthy gas companies too.”

Ms MacMahon argued that the plan would not drive inflation as higher prices were being driven “by war, climate-fuelled floods and corporate profiteering. This month the RBA admitted that inflation isn’t happening because people are buying more things, retail volumes grew only 0.2 per cent in the September quarter.”

Industry peak body the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association has argued that there are “no grounds” for a windfall profit tax on gas as the sector already pays its fair share. APPEA estimates the industry will funnel an extra $9bn to federal and state government coffers in 2022-23 through existing taxation measures.

The Australia Institute, in a report released in October, estimated the value of LNG exports across the country increased from $30.5bn in 2020-21 to $70.2bn in 2021-22 as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Australia’s three largest gas exporters, which together with their associates control 90 per cent of the nation’s market, are all based in Queensland.