A Gas by Any Other Name

In March of this year, Treasury modelled a windfall gas tax. In May, the Prime Minister announced there would be no windfall gas tax. In the intervening period, approximately everyone accused approximately everyone else of gaslighting the public about gas.

The Greens said Labor was gaslighting voters. One Nation said the Greens were gaslighting the industry. Anthony Albanese, in a separate context in 2025, had used the word "gaslighting" to describe Coalition energy policy. The Coalition, for its part, described the government's domestic reservation scheme as a distraction. Nobody described it as gaslighting, which may represent the only restraint exercised across the entire debate.

A Greens-led Senate inquiry, established in March and reporting in May, took evidence from gas companies explaining why they already pay enough tax, and from economists explaining why they do not. The committee's final report was tabled on May 7th. Budget night is May 12th. The sequencing has a certain quality to it.

Public support for a gas export levy is, depending on which poll you consult, somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent. The policy did not make the budget. This is, in the technical sense, a gap between stated public preference and political outcome. In the less technical sense, it is Tuesday, and the polling will remain at 70 to 80 per cent throughout, which is a remarkable number that has so far had no discernible effect on anything.

The gas debate has now been running long enough that it is no longer really about gas. It is about what kind of country Australia intends to be when a resource it owns produces large profits for companies that are, in the main, not Australian, during a crisis that has made those profits larger still. That question has also been running for a while. Parliament keeps talking. The gas, to its credit, does not gaslight anyone. It simply leaves.

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The views expressed are those of the correspondent. Factual claims draw on publicly available sources.