🗣️ EXCLUSIVE CHAT: David Pocock

Independent Senator David Pocock joins Jonesy & Amanda to chat about the Aussie gas scam.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
My Heart podcasts here, more Gold one on one point
seven podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Playlists and listen live on the free iHeart app.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
And Amanda jam Nation.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Well, as we've been saying all morning, Australia is one
of the biggest exporters of gas in the world, but
compared to other countries, we're making next to no money
from it, and as consumers we're paying through the nose
for it. Who's making the money? What's going on. One
of the people who's spoken out about this is Independent
politician David Pocock, who joins us now.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Good morning, David, Morning, Dames and Amanda David.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
When we say next to no money, when a matter
says that, is it actually next to no money?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well, for offshore energy exports here in Australia, States and
territories can't levy a royalty on offshore orders and so
the Commonwealth government's the one who's meant to get money
from that. Last time I checked with Treasury, we had
received zero sense for our offshore LNG exports. We're one
of the biggest offshore y exporters in the world. It

(00:59):
just makes no sense to me that we're giving away
a finite resource for free to mostly multinational corporations who
then don't actually pay much tax here.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
That's the thing. So we don't get the gas in
Australia and they're not paying the tax, so we're not
getting the revenue. Who set up this system? And why
is it like that? Why are we doing this?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Both sides of politics have overseen this where on the
one hand, we're giving away gas for free, and then
we're also not saying you have to at least put
a certain percentage of gas into the East Coast gas market,
and so we're essentially paying export prices for our own
gas impacts. Up in Darwin, I think is a really

(01:38):
good example of everything that's wrong with this whole sort
of regime of giving away our gas. They export nine
million tons annually, which doesn't really mean much, but that's
more than New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia use combined.
They pay no royalties on the gas that they extract,

(02:02):
they've never paid patrolling resource rent tax, and they hardly
pay any tax at all on their sort of corporate tax.
So not contributing getting our gas for free, exporting it
to Japan, and then we learn out that Japan is
now importing and then exporting our gas. They've become this
sort of middle middleman with our gas and made over

(02:24):
a billion dollars last year from doing that to our own gas.
So we're getting totally totally data as a country.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I look at the UAE with petrol over there, so
in Dubai you're paying a dollar or a liter for fuel.
If that was the case, we had the same thing here.
We should be getting gas for as cheap as chips
we should buy. My last gas bill was sixteen hundred dollars,
that's on top, and the electric bill was thirteen hundred dollars,
and that's just so that's quite phenomenal. I just don't

(02:52):
understand we should be getting it for free. We should
be like the Arabs.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
It should be, it should be, it should be cheaper.
And you know, I've met with big industrial gas users
who are using it to make fertilizer and other things,
and they say they're paying twenty bucks a gigdul and
they know that it's being exported in some instances at
four dollars a gigadeel.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
So I don't.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Understand why politicians aren't putting Australians ahead of the interests
of multinationals and foreign countries like, this is our gas.
It's a finite resource. We should be getting a good
return on it. And I think you only have to
look at Norway the approach they've taken to oil and gas.
They have a two point eight trillion dollar sovereign wealth
fund for their future, and we've got a trillion dollars

(03:35):
of national debt despite being one of the biggest fossil
fuel exporters in the world when it comes to coal, gas,
he ironoy exports all of these things that belong to
all of us, and yet we're not capturing the value
of that. I really think that needs to change. I
think more and more Australians are waking up to that
and saying, hey, you've got to put us first. This
is money that could be going into education and healthcare.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Can we get out? This deal's done for forty years.
We can't do anything about it.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
So the argument that the major parties that put forward
is exactly that, ah, well, you know, sovereign risk, we
can't do anything. One of the things that I've been
pushing them on is even if you just look at
uncontracted gas, so there's a there's gas that has long
term contracts, and then there's this big pool of uncontracted
gas which is multiples of any projected shortfall here in Australia.
If we just said, right, any uncontracted gas has to

(04:26):
come to Australians first, that's a solution. So yeah, I
don't really understand why there isn't the political will there.
It seems like they're a bit captured by these corporations
and putting them ahead of all of us. This belongs
to us. So yeah, I think there's more and more
voices speaking up on this, and I think, you know,

(04:47):
once more Australians understand what's actually being happened. How were
given being scammed that they'll be changed?

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, David, you brought it to our attention.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yes, and our kids are paying more through the techs
and these multinationals are paying tex on our natural resources.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yep. Yeah, young people are paying more back in hex
then we're getting from gas. Nurses pay more tax than
than we're getting from gas, and you know, I think
the gas companies are getting very sensitive about this. Every
time I talk about it, I get letters from gas
companies trying to point out that they pay things like

(05:22):
payroll tax and you know other taxes, but you know
that seems pretty standard to me. Most businesses are paying
that and most businesses aren't getting their inputs basically for free,
so this does need to change.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Well, David, thank you for joining us and thank you
for setting us straight on that.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Well, thanks Pepes for covering it. I think this is
a really important one.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Of course it is well independent politician, they're David Pocock.
So interesting, isn't it an outrageous