Parliament’s back, and crossbenchers and backbenchers are setting the agenda | Between the Lines
The Wrap with Bill Browne
Conservative commentators predicted that Treasurer Jim Chalmers would use last week’s Productivity Roundtable as an excuse to pursue an ambitious economic reform agenda. Don’t threaten me with a good time.
The Albanese Labor Government announced 10 “quick wins” like “accelerating” changes to environmental laws and Artificial Intelligence adoption in the public service, which the Australia Institute’s Matt Grudnoff summarised as “Artificial intelligence is good and red tape is bad”.
Executive Director Richard Denniss was more blunt in his analysis published in the Saturday Paper:
“In a democracy, power is the ability to talk bullshit and get away with it, and this week a lot of power spoke a lot of bullshit.”
Maybe more is coming. Economist Chris Richardson announced that something special happened in the Roundtable’s tax discussions, but he can’t tell us what or it’ll all come to naught.
With the government not deigning to give details, backbenchers and crossbenchers are driving the policy agenda instead.
Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja came to Parliament to talk about two topics the Government would rather ignore: starvation in Gaza and the harm done to Australians by the gambling industry.
Khawaja secured a meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, saying: “The prime minister has an opportunity right now to cement his legacy, to say ‘I fight for the people, I’m fighting for humanity’.”
Khawaja also spoke at a gambling roundtable hosted by Senator David Pocock and Kate Chaney MP. The Government has been sitting on a blueprint for gambling advertising reform for two years. Labor backbencher Peta Murphy chaired the inquiry into gambling reform. Its final report, You win some, you lose more, did not attract a single dissenting vote from any committee member – whether they were Labor, Liberal, National or independent.
It was parliamentary consensus-building at its very best: thoroughly exploring a difficult issue then getting universal backing for ambitious reforms. What more could a self-declared “big reforming government” ask for?
Sadly, Murphy passed away just months after the review. Two years on, the Albanese Government and Minister Anika Wells have failed to implement the reforms.
Instead, an Opposition backbencher set much of the parliamentary agenda this week – former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. Across two days, Parliament debated Joyce’s private member’s bill to abolish Australia’s net-zero targets.
Why?
Because the Labor Government sees political advantage in doing so – to further divide the Liberal–National Coalition and accelerate its slide into irrelevancy.
It’s a privilege not afforded to Zali Steggall MP’s truth in political advertising bill, Sophie Scamps MP’s “ending jobs for mates” bill or Senator Jordon Steele-John’s bill to lower the voting age to 16, any of which would be more relevant to the issues facing Australia.
The Government has moved to waive some welfare debts and compensate Australians who were wrongly pursued for Centrelink debts. It’s a grim reminder that the Robodebt scandal was not an aberration, just the worst excess of a welfare system that – by design – punishes the poor and vulnerable and keeps them in poverty.
The Government’s changes, while welcome, are a corrective, not a bold new reform. Australia could easily afford to lift welfare-recipients above the poverty line; in fact, we briefly did so during the COVID pandemic.
Ending poverty in this country: now that would be in the proud Labor tradition, guarantee Albanese’s legacy, and put the Government, not crossbenchers and backbenchers, firmly back in the driver’s seat.
— Bill Browne is the Director of Democracy & Accountability at the Australia Institute
The Big Stories
ACTU plan to tax gas exports would fix gas policy mess and raise $12.5b for Australians
Our analysis shows the Australian Council of Trade Union’s proposal for a 25% tax on gas exports would end the gas shortages being engineered by the gas industry, cut gas prices, and deliver a $12.5 billion revenue windfall for Australian industry and households.
A decade of incremental technocratic policies like the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism, Heads of Agreements and Gas Code of Conduct have comprehensively failed, and it’s time for a fresh approach.
The ACTU’s proposed 25% tax on gas export revenue is a simple, effective solution that cannot easily be gamed by the gas industry. On top of finally solving gas price and supply issues in Australia, the ACTU proposal would get a fairer share of revenue from gas exports for Australians, bringing us closer to the other gas exporting countries like Norway and Qatar.
Gun lobby thinks they are “winning” as guns surge
The gun lobby is mobilising against gun laws, and claims it is “winning” the fight against Australia’s gun laws, celebrating an increase in guns in our community.
The Guardian’s Sarah Martin reported Australia Institute research that revealed that there are now 4 million licenced firearms in Australia – more than before the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
We still have no National Firearms Register, over 30 years after the states and territories agreed we need one. The Federal Government’s plan for a National Firearms Register will take until at least 2028. The gun lobby’s excitement shows that the time for action is now.
We’ve launched a petition calling on the Federal Government to urgently establish a National Firearms Register.
Three simple, fair steps which would raise 70 billion dollars a year in extra tax
Australia is a low-tax country that does not do a good job of taxing wealth. It is one of the few developed economies in the world which has neither a wealth tax nor an inheritance tax.
Correcting this would raise huge amounts of extra revenue for essential services and ease growing inequality in Australia.
Our research found:
- A 2% wealth tax on people worth more than $5 million (excluding the family home and superannuation) would raise $41 billion per year.
- The reintroduction of an inheritance tax (which operated in various forms at a state and federal level in the 1960s and 70s) would not only reduce intergenerational inequality, it would raise $10 billion per year.
- If it scrapped the capital gains tax discount, the government would raise an extra $19 billion a year, which would have the double benefit of making property more affordable for those currently locked out of the market.
If we want well-funded schools and hospitals; decent, affordable housing for all; a world-class NDIS; a fair welfare system; and dozens of other things which would improve the lives of millions of Australians, we can have them.
Universities’ crisis of governance
This week, Labor and the Coalition voted down David Pocock’s motions calling for ANU to produce documents related to its extensive and damaging cuts.
Embattled ANU Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell welcomed the move, and condemned the motions in no uncertain terms, saying:
“I want to be very clear that we have all watched the overreach of politicians into daily operations of American universities and the consequences have been far reaching.”
American universities are being blackmailed with losing billions of dollars in government funding over pro-Palestine protests on their campuses, while ANU is being subject to requests for basic transparency. The contrast seems clear.
If Australian universities are worried about interference, they can get their own house in order. Australia Institute research has found that fossil fuel companies fund scholarships, research centres, and tens of millions of dollars in research. Universities should cut their ties to fossil fuel companies to protect their independence, as they have with big tobacco.
The political dream of AUKUS that consumes reality | Allan Behm
“Australian money is flushing into the US submarine construction system – a billion USD so far, with another billion by year’s end. What will Australia have to show for it?” ponders Allan Behm in an analysis piece for the Canberra Times.
“We want to be able to build our own nuclear submarines. But instead of investing in our own yards, we think it’s smart to invest in American ones. It takes a special form of cleverness to think that up.”
The Win
Big moves on diesel subsidy
One of Australia’s biggest mining companies, Fortescue, has co-published a report with a leading science organisation, calling for an end to Australia’s biggest fossil fuel subsidy.
The report by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering calls out Australia’s Fuel Tax Credit Scheme for “subsidising diesel and discouraging uptake of alternative fuels.” It calls for the scheme to be phased out, “especially in high-emission sectors”.
When they say “high-emission sectors”, they mean mining.
A mining company calling for an end to a subsidy to mining companies seems unlikely, but Fortescue have been going hard on decarbonisation for years now. They see themselves, and Australia more broadly, as having an advantage in a greener mining industry, and the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme is slowing this down.
That makes them an outlier in the mining industry based in Australia (think BHP, Rio Tinto, Gina, Adani) who are happy to sit back, pollute and enjoy the $10 billion per year fuel subsidy.
It is also of course, something The Australia Institute has been calling for for over a decade.
The Bin
Barnaby Joyce wants to scrap emission reduction targets
Barnaby Joyce’s private member’s bill to scrap net zero was debated this week in parliament. The debate was adjourned and is likely to continue next week.
It is very rare for parliament to debate a private member’s bill, particularly one that has as little support as Barnaby’s. The Labor Government is allowing the debate because it wants to highlight the division within the Coalition on climate change.
While some might be happy to watch the Coalition air its dirty laundry in public, there is another advantage for the Labor Government. With Labor set to announce its 2035 emissions reduction target this year, this debate is highlighting how little a Coalition government would do. This makes whatever target Labor sets look good by comparison. Even if what they announce falls short of Australia’s fair share to avoid dangerous climate change, they can always shrug and say at least where a better option than the Coalition.
But doing less than the bare minimum will consign current and future generations to a more dangerous climate. Australian people need to push the government to take more action, not focus on an impotent Coalition’s commentary.
It’s another example of the problem with celebrating centrism that Richard unpacks in Dead Centre, the new Vantage Point essay. Order your issue of Dead Centre today.
The Quote
– Rex Patrick, former Senator and founder of the Whistleblower Justice Fund.
Australia’s whistleblower laws are poorly-drafted, and Richard Boyle inadvertently broke the law when he gathered evidence about aggressive and unethical debt recovery practices at the Australian Tax Office.
He raised concerns internally, just as would-be whistleblowers are told to do. Those claims were not taken as seriously as they should have been. So he went to the media so the public could find out what happened.
He has faced an expensive and damaging prosecution that will have deterred others from speaking out.
Yesterday, the court announced that Boyle has avoided a conviction or jail sentence, instead receiving a year-long good behaviour bond. It’s the best that could be hoped for from a prosecution that should never have happened, under laws that the government agrees are flawed but has failed to fix.
Podcasts
Big Gas’ greed is killing Australian manufacturers | Follow the Money
The colossal price rises on the east coast, brought on by excessive gas exports, have been a disaster for Australian manufacturers and households. On this episode of Follow the Money, manufacturing industry representative Geoff Crittenden and Australia Institute Principal Advisor Mark Ogge join Ebony Bennett to discuss how governments can ensure there’s more gas available for Australians.
Listen now:
How not to impose a tariff | Dollars & Sense
Postal services around the world have suspended services to the United States in response to the Trump administration’s chaotic tariff policies. On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt Grudnoff and Elinor Johnston-Leek discuss why the latest inflation data isn’t anything to panic about, the case for economy-wide price gouging laws, and why Australia Post has stopped sending many packages to the United States.
Listen now:
Empire strikes back | After America
Allan Behm joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss Trump’s deployment of federal authorities to Democrat-voting jurisdictions and the imperial revival that’s occurring under the second Trump presidency.
Listen now:
What’s On
Health + Climate Forum 2025
Thursday 4 September | Canberra
Richard Denniss is speaking at a forum hosted by Doctors for the Environment Australia, featuring leaders in health, politics, and advocacy to tackle how health is impacted by climate change, energy production and planetary health.
This landmark event explores how environmental policy and climate action shape the wellbeing of our communities – and importantly demonstrates what we can all do to make a positive difference to our planet’s health.
Cooked: Has the gas industry captured WA?
Tuesday 9 September | Perth
Join Konrad from Punter’s Politics and Mark from the Australia Institute as they discuss the gas industry, its influence on the government and what we can do about.
Laurie Carmichael Lecture 2025: The Hon. Doug Cameron
Wednesday 10 September | Melbourne
The Hon. Doug Cameron, former Senator for New South Wales from 2007-2019, will deliver the 2025 Laurie Carmichael Lecture on the subject ‘Australian Sovereignty and the Path to Peace’.
Save Tuvalu, Save the World | Documentary screening and Q+A
Sydney 23 Sept | Canberra 24 Sept | Melbourne 25 Sept
This original documentary from The Australia Institute takes viewers to the front line of the destruction that climate change is causing. In the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, sea water is being pushed up through the land, destroying traditional crops and making water unfit to drink.
This documentary presented by Walkley Award winning journalist and former ABC 4 Corners reporter Stephen Long, Save Tuvalu, Save the World, will be screened, with a Q&A featuring Stephen Long and climate campaigner and Tuvalu resident Gitty K Yee to follow.
Revenue Summit 2025
Wednesday 29 October | Australian Parliament House
Australians need a tax system that fits the needs of our community for a more equitable society. After this year’s historic election win, the ALP government has a unique opportunity to reform the taxation system and set a bold agenda, or as Anthony Albanese himself calls it – show some “progressive patriotism”.
This year the Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit brings together economists and leading experts to discuss revenue options to meet Australia’s spending needs. The 2025 Revenue Summit is an opportunity to contextualise debt, explore potential new means of revenue, challenge paradigms and reassess public spending priorities.
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