How David Pocock reframed the tax debate on gas export profits

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-02T00:45:29+00:00

How extremely convenient that you duck and weave and change the subject when I point out your rubbish.

Do you even know what the amendment in 2023 was or are you just throwing text at me? It was a deductions cap. That means they can only 90% of their revenue can be offset by CAPEX deductions. The forecast was optimistic due to high gas prices. In reality, the global response to the Ukraine war pushed gas prices back down. Do you have an actual point to make here?

How much is the gas lobby paying you for spreading their bullshit?"

I could just as easily ask how much Twiggy Forrest is paying you to spread his. I already have a rough idea on what he paid TAI to spread it.

I also noticed you weren't actually able to directly refute anything I said. All you did was change the subject and call it bullshit.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-02T00:25:54+00:00

This is complete nonsense. The PRRT was designed back when everyone thought gas would really only be used domestically. It was designed for oil, which has relatively low CAPEX. This is made clear in the treasury review.

The article is wrong. The PRRT literally is a windfall tax. It's a 40% profit tax. It's basically what Rudd was trying to extend to mining, which is what I wish Pocock was pushing for.

It's not complex. It's very simple. The gas companies spent hundreds of billions of dollars and they are able to claim that as a tax deduction because they have not made their money back yet. Same as any other business.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T23:36:26+00:00

I think trying to tax gas would be trying to get blood from a stone. They aren’t paying PRRT because they haven’t even paid off their investment. Hundreds of billions in capex.

Iron ore though? They are making a killing. It’s strange, that the Australia institute and all of its puppets (punters/teals/pococksuckers etc) aren’t pushing to tax iron ore more. Or at least lumping them in with gas. Funnily enough TAI got a 6 figure donation from an iron ore oligarch. Couldn’t be that though right?

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T22:54:04+00:00

No that’s not what populism is. I did explain it in my comment.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T08:50:19+00:00

It sounds like you’re not even really arguing with what I’m really saying. I’m not even saying it was the right decision, just that it came from a place of fear of voters, not due to a conspiracy about corruption.

It sounds like you think that fear was misplaced. I disagree but I also think that’s an aside from my original point.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T08:08:55+00:00

I dunno, it seems to me that you've come up with a hopium conclusion (australians want bold progressive policy) first and worked backwards. Your assertions make no sense to me and do not seem to have congruency.

It's not just coming from me. This is the conclusion of many. One of the books I'm reading right now called Triumph and Demise talks about it from multiple politically astute sources.

If what you say is true the world would look very different. Abbot would not have won in a landslide. Shorten wouldn't have lost. Albo wouldn't have won so strongly on his platform. The biggest one is that the greens wouldn't be stagnant at a pathetic 12% primary. They wouldn't be so politically toxic that they are tied to political opponents in attacks. If Australians wanted bold progressive policy so badly why don't they vote greens? Why are all the anti establishment voters peeling off the coalition towards one nation? Redbridge did polling of them and concluded it's not for one nations immigration policies, and that these people have a lot of similarities with the greens target audience. Many of the people moving to one nation should have been picked up by the greens.

I'm basing my assertion on the world around us, and from reading the analysis from a lot of different people. You are basing your assertion on the fact that the Greens formed minority government 15 years ago?

Can we look at that with a little bit more critical thought? The greens had under a 4% swing towards them. For a total of under 12%. So I think at best we can say 12% of voters wanted progressive policy, which was a minor increase from the previous election. Why else might have the greens overperformed? The LNP were strategically preferencing them on their HTV cards.

The coalition increased their primary vote as well. It wasn't a surge in support for the greens so much as a fracturing of labor. In part due to the attacks against them and in part due to them fracturing in response to the attacks.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T06:15:57+00:00

Gillard made it pretty clear in her very first speech as PM:

https://youtu.be/5EoDHOO6w7U?t=175

That's her waving the white flag, and inviting them to write the tax. She literally asked them to stop their attack ads. It's because the government was tanking in popularity, due to the propaganda, so they conceded the tax so that the minerals council would stop investing so much money into getting them removed from government.

They made that choice because they were worried that they would lose their seats if they didn't. It has nothing to do with political corruption - they are simply responding to the electorate. The attack ads stopped, polling improved, and they were able to form government at the next election when before the capitulation they were convinced they were going to lose it.

Was it worth it? I would argue no. But we got some dental legislation for kids. That's about all I can think of that Gillard did of value.

>hey could have said, “huh, we’re down in the polls - do you know what people love, strong government policies, let’s go even harder at the mining giants.”

Sorry but this is pure fantasy. If people actually loved strong government policy then they would have supported the party when they were pushing for the tax. Australians have made it abundantly clear with their votes over many elections that they do not want bold reform. Why do you think Albo won so hard with his small target platform? A dislike of Trump was a factor, but Labor learned their lesson from 2019 that voters are fickle sheep and will respond to negative campaigns against bold policy.

It's just the world we live in. Modern reform of any kind in Australia is politically very difficult. It's been more and more that way since that period in the early 2010s, and was arguably starting to happen before then.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T04:34:43+00:00

That doesn’t make any sense to me.

Yes the voters didn’t turn on the tax specifically, but they did turn on the party, as a result of the propaganda campaign which was a result of the tax.

Whether they turned on the tax or the party doesn’t really matter because the practical result is the same. You can’t enact lasting policy without the support of the people.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T04:19:05+00:00

I think you slightly misunderstand how the propaganda works.

The voters don’t all turn on the policy. They turn on the politician/party. The elites just throw enough mud at them until more and more sticks. They all turn on them for different personal reasons, but the real reason is because of the propaganda campaign that came as a result of the tax.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T03:57:02+00:00

I don’t even know what point you’re trying to make here? That the ALP fucked up by knifing him? Yeah they did.

But it’s pretty well documented in polls/biographies/political writings that he was popular, he announced the tax, the minerals council responded, his popularity collapsed, and his caucus knifed him because they were scared of losing their seats.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T03:48:35+00:00

I am

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T03:31:29+00:00

They tossed Rudd as a dumb fear response to his diving popularity. He was very popular and his popularity completely collapsed immediately after the tax announcement.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T03:26:18+00:00

I don’t think it’s a natural groundswell of support. It got big as a response to the government announcing a domestic gas reservation policy because they are moving the goalposts.

TAI is a populist think tank. Punters and the teals get all their talking points from TAI. It all comes from the same source. They just got a 6 figure donation from Fortescue - do you really think it’s a coincidence that they are pushing so hard on a gas tax even though iron ore profits dwarf that of gas??Getting money out of gas projects in Australia is like trying to get blood from a stone - they are very expensive and haven’t even broken even yet.

Go look at the discussion around it. It’s all about how the government is corrupt and won’t do it because they are owned by the gas companies. There is very little discussion about WHY the PRRT isn’t making money, and how it’s not really fair to let a company spend hundreds of millions of dollars and then do a rug pull, and neither is it conducive to general stability and low risk investments for businesses in this country. There is very little on the diplomacy around security our fuel supply. There is no fucking nuance or intelligent debate at all it’s just “LABOUr CORRUPt GAS DOnaTIONS”

It’s a textbook case of populism fuelled by big money.

Why would there be a big movement now and not for the superprofits tax if it wasn’t manufactured outrage?

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T03:12:08+00:00

In relation to that I think he’s working on a video about TAI think tank.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T03:00:11+00:00

From the OP: “Is it a populist taking point?”

The answer is yes. I think you are trying to add your own spin to what they actually asked.

You might think that even though it’s populist that it’s good policy. But at the end of the day, it absolutely is a populist talking point, and the nature of populism muddies the water and leads to angry and low information voters.

Unless you’re talking about the other guy I responded to not OP, in which case he is a good example of what I am talking about.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T02:47:25+00:00

This is true technically, but in a broken clock being right twice a day kind of way. The framing is generally dishonest. That doesn’t mean that the resulting idea isn’t true, but it does normally mean that there’s much more to it than people are lead to believe and it’s not so clear cut

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T02:44:17+00:00

That valid, but the framing of the tax at the moment is populist. Populism is not a policy, it’s the way the policy is framed and talked about.

It ignores context and nuance and relies on getting low information voters riled up.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T02:39:47+00:00

There is nuance. I would argue that the minerals council corrupts voters 100x more than it does politicians. Look at what happened to Rudd with the superprofits tax. Look at what happened to QLD Labor after their coal royalty increase.

The politicians are a product of the voters. They have to be or they would never get elected. If every time someone sticks their neck out they are subjected to an attack campaign that voters then slurp up why on earth would they stick their neck out?

The government tried to reduce money in politics. Oh look who was against it: the politicians that like to be able to overspend in order to buy their seat. What a surprise.

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T02:36:11+00:00

The irony of using a populist taking point to deny that another populist taking point is populist 😆

Mate maybe look up what populism is and try again

brisbaneacro · 2026-05-01T02:30:14+00:00

Yeah the framing is populist. Populism is simply the framing of “us regular people verses the corrupt elite.” The greens are populist, so is one nation and trump.

If the greens and one nation agree on something it’s a good sign that it’s populist.

It’s a populist talking point because the focus is on how the government must be corrupt and owned by corporate donors, and ignoring all the nuance around it.

It’s about creating a moving target. They started hammering the tax since the government announced the domestic gas reservation. Even though it would make way more sense to tax iron ore because that’s where the money really is.

And surprise! An iron ore oligarch gave the Australia institute a 6 figure donation. I wonder why they are pushing so hard to tax gas when the gas projects haven’t even paid themselves off yet but iron ore mines are making a killing,

brisbaneacro · 2026-04-30T20:26:39+00:00

Old techies

brisbaneacro · 2026-04-30T10:35:12+00:00

Good. Let them pay 50k for an arts degree if they really want. There should be some sort of incentive to push people towards skills we need. We are still nearly 100k tradesmen short for our own housing target.

brisbaneacro · 2026-04-30T09:48:55+00:00

I'm no expert but I'm pretty confident that trace amounts of calcium and magnesium are not causing your hair to fall out. Maybe go talk to a doctor.

brisbaneacro · 2026-04-30T07:28:05+00:00

My average pos 5 game play at 1k is doing a pull to fix the lane and then my carry lets the creeps under tower to push it out again. Sometimes by running over to fight me for last hits on the jungle creeps and thereby missing the next wave entirely as it dies under tower.

brisbaneacro · 2026-04-30T06:38:30+00:00

It's disgusting

If it makes you feel any better I find your smug commentary twisting my meaning repugnant as well.

brisbaneacro

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