Labor ignored advice to put a super tax profits tax on gas industry

Jason Clare has just told Radio National Breakfast that the Ukraine war drove a massive energy price spike and defended Labor’s response to it, which was to cushion consumer prices.

What he didn’t say was that during that energy price spike, Labor ignored the advice of every economist from Ken Henry to UK Treasury to put a super profits tax on the gas industry. Here’s our report from 2022.

As a result, gas companies have walked off with $100 billion in windfall profits that could have funded services in Australia:

Labor might have done OK protecting Australia’s consumers from the price spike, but they gifted multinational gas companies vast windfall profits that should have gone to the public.