Vikki Campion: Federal Budget relying on fuel tax, mining and power companies, and agriculture

Three of the four top taxpayers in Australia in the financial year ending 2021 were mining companies, writes Vikki Campion. If they shut down, where will the government find a substitute revenue stream?

Our “dirty habits” are not just essential for services, but also for the fancies, frolics and green rent-seekers who can’t pay for themselves, no matter how cheap and self-sustaining they tell us they are.

Motorists driving those “filthy” combustion engines and mining companies providing “dirty” coal and gas, smokers and drinkers, pay not just for health, education and welfare in Labor’s first budget, but for our climate warriors and rage-farming laptop activists.

If the beneficiaries of this tax, including — but not limited to — the Environmental Defenders Office and Environmental Justice Australia, which spend their time shutting down, stalling and stopping coal and gas projects, genuinely believe what they preach in the courtroom, then why accept cash from the “polluters” they seek to destroy?

EDO may be a registered charity, but don’t put them in the same box as St Vincent de Paul or The Salvation Army, who help anyone who needs it.

EDO’s latest projects include fighting the economic development of the Northern Territory and employment of Indigenous Australians in the Beetaloo, as well as our biggest gas exporter, Woodside’s Scarborough gas project.

Electric vehicles are not expected to add revenue to the federal budget until past 2026. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

When it comes to the most prominent environmental debate in Australia, littering the bush with wind farms and 10,000km of transmission lines, regional people get no free legals.

As the EDO fights against gas in The Pilliga scrub — and coal anywhere — their job is to create impediments for those that fund them.

Three of the four top taxpayers in Australia in the financial year ending 2021 were mining companies: Rio Tinto, who paid $5.2 billion, BHP paid $4.2 billion, and Fortescue Metals $2.9 billion. On top of that is the GST involved in their purchases, and the income tax from their workers.

The EDO’s latest climate report not just seeks a ban on all new coal and gas projects, driving power prices up further, but aims to “move over time from low-carbon to zero-carbon to carbon-positive living” and “ensure inclusive, liveable communities with public and active transport connections to workplaces, homes and nature”.

How do the EDO and Environmental Justice Australia expect to collect their taxpayer allocation of $9.8 million from 2022–23 and $2.6 million annually under this utopia?

Once you remove corporate taxes and fuel excise, your pocket is the only other place the money can come from. The government taxes all the money you earn, then taxes the post-tax cash you spend on food and services you need, again on any savings or superannuation you have, and taxes you through your fuel driving to work or to do your job.

There’s no pot of gold at the base of wind farms. Picture: AFP

Most revealing in forecasts is that while Labor’s narrative has been heavily focused on posing with electric cars, trucks and utes, the Treasury not only expects combustion engines to be here to stay, but that the tax on diesel, petrol and LPG is going to be a more significant revenue source than ever.

Next time you fill up the car, remember Treasury expects a windfall petrol excise of $7.6 billion in the forward estimates to 2025, and diesel drivers will pay $17.3 billion that year.

The fact that Treasury has fuel excise increasing over the next four years indicates that for all the millions poured into taxpayer-funded subsidies for electric vehicles, the death of the combustion engine will not happen any time soon. It will grow and multiply and pay a lot of bills.

You are subsidising EVs, which budget documents show add up to $410 million, not the $375 million announced before the election, and paying nearly $40 million to build electric vehicle chargers.

The revenue line from electric vehicles into 2026 is notably absent.

If the forward estimates tell you anything, it’s that we will be relying on dirty motorists and miners to pay for green whims, from the $99.7 million “for First Nations peoples to respond to climate change”, including the $15.9 million Climate Warriors training program, to $36.1 million for “ development of climate reporting standards” for large businesses and financial institutions.

From the extra $275.7 million to beef up the Department of Climate Change to pay to “reinvigorate Australian climate action”, and for “smooth transformation of our energy system, capture the opportunities of a clean energy economy”, to the $45.8 million “to restore Australia’s reputation and increase international engagement on climate change and energy transformation issues”, including to secure a bid to host a UN Conference with the Pacific Islands.

From the $9.3 million “to build climate risk management capabilities and systems across the Australian Public Service” and “commence designing a National Climate Risk Assessment” to the $2.2 million grants to “support green markets” and the $7.1 million for a policy and reporting framework to make the APS “net zero by 2030”.

We are investing heavily in organisations whose entire purpose will be to stop the use of fossil fuels which provide the revenue for their very existence.

Without company taxpayers and combustion engines, a few smokers and drinkers, the whole budget relies on taxing your wages and goods and services.

If you shut down our corporate taxpayers and the $132.7 billion they provide, this money can only come from our pocket.

Labor’s investment in activists that attack mining and power companies, agriculture and even argue against the infrastructure in place to save water is one thing — their hypocrisy in accepting the money from the very groups they are out to destroy is another.

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