The Point Live: Ley expected to follow Nationals on net zero to extend leadership, RBA holds rates. As it happened

Despite our enormous energy reserves, Australians households are paying higher prices for electricity than Japanese consumers according to new analysis released by the Australia Institute; Australia Last: The failure of Australian gas policy – The Australia Institute.

 “While it’s hard to believe our governments could have messed things up this badly, the fact is people living in the countries we export our gas to are getting cheaper electricity than we are,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of the Australia Institute.

“For example, Australian consumers are already paying higher prices for electricity than households in Japan. Indeed, if the average Australian household could access the same electricity prices available in Tokyo, then they could save close to $550 a year.

But rather enquire into who caused this debacle and commit to fixing it, the Australian Minister for Resources, Madeleine King is actually reassuring the Japanese that she is determined to keep things the way they are. In 2024 she declared:

“LNG produced off the coast of Western Australia and shipped to … [Japan, China, South Korea and India] … ensures they can power their cities; their homes and their industry.”

“So, while Australians are warned of a ‘shortage of gas’ and told that we have no choice but to convert our farmlands into industrial fracking gas fields, the Minister for Australian resources is reassuring foreign countries that we have boundless gas to share, said Dr Denniss.”

“Australians are the victims of the most outrageous doublespeak when it comes to gas. In the last 10 years the wholesale price of gas has tripled, our electricity prices have surged and whole industries have been warned of gas shortages unless new gas projects are approved. And at the same time the Minister who is supposed to be managing our natural resources on our behalf is bragging to our export customers about how much gas we are giving them,” said Dr Denniss

In the same speech Minister King declared: 

“Australia is Japan’s single largest provider of energy. It is estimated our LNG and coal exports support around eight hours of power generation a day in Japan.

So that means that we, a country with a population of 25 million, provides vast energy resources for a country of 125 million people. Those figures of themselves demonstrate the responsibility Australia has to ensure that this energy security is maintained, not only for Japan, but for our other important regional neighbours.”

 “Australia doesn’t have a shortage of gas. It has a shortage of Ministers that are brave enough to put Australia first. It’s time Australia stopped approving more gas exports until Australians had cheap energy and Australia and our exports customers were on track to meet their climate commitments,” said Dr Denniss

The Financial Review today carried a report on the R&D tax breaks and who is getting them.

The Financial Review is especially concerned about Domino’s which received a $6.6 million in R&D support. It seems the support was for a new product with eight party pies embedded in pizza dough.

On top of the pizza R&D there was support for R&D in the gambling industry with some of the claimants mentioned here:

$43 million claim by gaming giant Tabcorp.
$18.9 million for poker machine behemoth Aristocrat.
$10.4 million for the Lottery Corporation.
$7.9 million for Austria’s slot machine maker Ainsworth Game Technology). and
$7.5 million for US-owned bookmaker PointsBet.

Some of these payments would have been hidden in manufacturing but tax office statistics reveal concessions of $18.8 million for gambling activities in 2022-23.

There were also a number of alcohol companies named in the Financial Review including:
$8.9 million for Asahi,
$3.4 million for Treasury Wine,
$2.5 million for Casella and
$0.2 million for Fellr.

It’s hard to imagine how any of the companies on this list are doing anything that warrants government support.

Meanwhile the Tax Office shows $0.5 million went to the industry described as “Pubs, Taverns and Bars”

Tax Office data also show the federal government spent $325.4 million on fossil fuel miners, coal and gas.
The productivity round table drew attention to the need for more innovation and investment in Australia. One place we should look is Australian spending on research and development (R&D).

ABS data showed that in 2023-24 businesses in Australia spent just 0.91% of GDP on R&D. When government is included Australia spends just two thirds of the OECD average and we rank 22nd out of the 38 OECD countries, behind Slovenia, Estonia, Iceland and Finland.
We could ignore Australia’s R&D position and argue we should leave it to the market. However, even the bastion of free marketeers, the Productivity Commission, has argued that Australia underinvests in R&D and so R&D needs government support.

A good deal of that support comes in the form of tax concessions for businesses undertaking R&D. The latest Tax Office data shows that in 2022-23 the government gave business R&D tax concessions worth $6.1 billion by way of $4.0 billion in refunds for R&D spending and non-refundable tax breaks of $2.2 billion that can be carried forward as tax losses in future years.

When the government spends so much to support R&D you would hope it is being well spent and moves us further up the OECD ladder. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily true.

It is quite apparent that a good deal of the spending and tax concessions for business R&D are going to the wrong industries.

The fact that Australia is so low on the R&D list and that much of the money goes to the wrong businesses suggests that the open slather approach to supporting any old R&D needs reviewing. While some action has been taken to stop some of the “sin” industries getting R&D grants it is apparent that more needs to be done.

You will be shocked to learn that Labor defeated that motion.

Labor also defeated (with the help of the Coalition) a Greens attempt to force employers to pay super contributions regardless of how many hours they work. Under the current laws, if you are under 18 and work less than 30 hours, you are not eligible for superannuation. The Greens wanted to have them included, but the major parties voted it down.

Barbara Pocock said it was costing young workers thousands in their early career:

The majority of young people (92 per cent)  work fewer than 30 hours a week because of school and study commitments, meaning they miss out on super. That’s unfair. Young people shouldn’t be penalised for going to school or studying.

Under 18s pay taxes and contribute to our economy, so why shouldn’t they receive super?  

Excluding young people from super only makes it harder to get ahead — robbing them of thousands in retirement savings and financial security.

In The Australian Patrick Gibbons, a partner at Orizontas (a corporate advisory firm) and Angus Barker, chairman of Australian Rare Earths, make a case for dig baby dig  with critical minerals. They have been taking their double act around the media of late. A couple week’s ago in the AFR they also wrote about how vital was the critical minerals deal with the US for disrupting China, as they wrote “the just announced framework is a great first step in addressing what is now clearly a major threat posed by China. And while China may have gotten the jump in this sector, the Trump-Albanese meeting showed, western countries are now getting serious in how they respond, and Australia will be at the forefront.”

Critical/rare minerals policy, as we saw in last night’s 4 Corners episode, is basically catnip with those who dislike China and those who enjoy Australia snuggling up the USA. It also is a big one for those who salivate at the thought of more mining.

Gibbons and Barker argue in The Oz that Australia has to make sure we don’t miss out on the scramble to be part of the rare earths’ bonanza. And as ever it comes down to wanting faster approvals. They argue that “an option the federal government could consider is to reserve access to its national offtake agreements only to projects in those states where approval processes provide the required certainty. This is not about lowering our existing robust environmental standards; it’s about meeting legislated approval timelines.”

Now I don’t know about you, but describing our existing environmental standards as “robust” is not a great start for convincing me that the argument is about ensuring environmental considerations remains paramount.

At this point we should remember that the US-Australia deal on rare earths that Trump and Albanese signed is very specific about reducing regulatory approvals.

The agreement states:

“Permitting:  The Participants are taking measures to accelerate, streamline, or deregulate permitting timelines and processes, including to obtain permits for critical minerals and rare earths mining, separation, and processing within their respective domestic regulatory systems, consistent with applicable law.

Now you might think that “consistent with applicable law” is a safeguard. Alas remember, the changes to the EPBC Act currently before parliament include the ability for the Environment Minister to override any environmental concerns due to “national security”. And remember as well the agreement Trump and Albanese signed says that “The Participants are intensifying their cooperative efforts to accelerate the secure supply of critical minerals and rare earths necessary to support manufacturing of defence and advanced technologies and their respective industrial bases”

Clearly we are about to fall into the same trap as we have with gas – where environmental and Indigenous cultural concerns are for nought, and taxing the production and exports will be minimized under the guise of it being important for national security.

The government needs to ensure the taxation and production of rare earths and other critical minerals is done in a way that benefits Australians; not companies and their profits – and certainly not the US defence industry.

You can tell Andrew Wallace is a Queenslander, because he opens his seconding of this motion to keep the FOI bill in the House for debate (rather than the Federation chamber) because he says the “House of Representatives is the premier debate chamber in this country” which would be news to the University of Sydney debate union.

This motion is mostly just rabble raising – the government have the numbers in the house and nothing gets through that it doesn’t want. But it shows where the Coalition is trying to go given the bin fire that is their party room at the moment.

Wallace also wishes Burke a happy birthday. Makes sense that Burke is a Scorpio.

Meanwhile, Wallace was obviously not too prepared for this debate, because so far his main argument is that the House of Representatives has a sky light and the Federation chamber does not (his overall point is about sunlight getting in)

Burke gives thanks for his procedural motion birthday gift, tells Wallace he is allowed to sit down before the clock runs out and talking about sky lights is probably a good sign the speech is done, and then points out that there is still no one physically present in the press gallery, because they can monitor everything through the broadcast, which is also available for the federation chamber.

He’s only do this so he can have some fun.

Burke then makes the point that the Coalition has not actually put anyone on the speaking list (other than the shadow minister) for the FOI debate.

“We are now going to have to bring everybody in here, to vote on where the bill with no one listed to speak should be debated, because that’s the issue with transparency.”

He saved that little tid-bit til last. True Scorpio energy.

Alex Hawke is suspending standing orders to debate the government’s transparency record – he doesn’t want the government to send the freedom of information bill to the federation chamber (where no one ever sees the debate)

He says the rest of the parliament is in lock-step with the Coalition on this.

And he wants to know where the press gallery is. He says that the media also agrees (which is true)

“This will weaken the quality of your government, so any backbencher who is concerned…I can see their faces start to waver,” Hawke says.

Australians lose more to gambling than anyone else in the world, but the harms of gambling aren’t evenly spread. Gambling has a devastating effects on Indigenous people, and new research from The Australia Institute shows that pokies are of particular concern. 

The analysis found that if you live in an area of Australia with a high Indigenous population you’re likely to see more poker machines, and lose more money to the pokies. Areas of Australia where at least 10 per cent of the population is Indigenous have 50% more poker machines than average. People in these areas also lose over $100 more a year to the pokies ($700 per year compared to “just” $581 in other areas). 

The only exception to this national pattern is Western Australia, where poker machines are limited to a single Casino. This natural experiment shows that the solution to the problem isn’t complicated: if we limited the availability of the machines, people would lose less to the pokies. 

Nationwide, 3.8% of Australians are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, so these areas have twice the average Indigenous population. This means that Indigenous Australians are being disproportionately harmed by the pokies. But that also means that properly regulating poker machines would be hugely beneficial for Indigenous Australians.

Checking in on what is coming up in the senate (another punishment) and we see that Labor senator Marielle Smith has been tapped to deliver the next volley in the tit-for-tat senate motion contest currently being played out.

David Pocock and others have wanted the Briggs report into the public service job for mates controversy which was given to the government two years ago. The government has said no and has refused orders for the production of documents and avoided the issue at question time and estimates.

In a bid to force the government’s hand, Pocock won the support of the majority of the senate in moving a motion to extend senate question time for at least 30 minutes, with an additional five more non-government questions being added to the list.

Labor then tried to amend Pocock’s victory by having Smith move motions to suspend standing orders so she could ask a question in that time period to extend it even further.

It has basically been silly buggers ever since.

Pocock went to the bathroom during one of the sessions, which Labor’s Tim Ayres tried to parlay into a gotcha moment and now the two sides are locked in a battle of wills.

Smith has now given notice that she wants to keep all senators in the chamber for QT (attendance is optional) except to breastfeed or go to the bathroom.

This is what your government is up to, in case anyone was wondering:

Smith has given notice that she will move—That the following apply as a temporary order until the arrangements for question time adopted by the Senate on 29 October 2025 cease to apply:

1. All senators be required to attend the Senate whilst questions without notice are asked and answered.
2. Senators may be excused from the requirements of paragraph (1) if they have been granted leave of absence by the Senate, or with the agreement of all whips and independent senators.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has joined independent senator Lidia Thorpe in a bid to bring more attention to the Labor government’s attempts to give police the power to recommend welfare cancellations:

If gambling were a sport it’d be played by more Australian teenagers than anything else. 

That’s according to analysis by The Australia Institute, which shows that while 480,000 Australian teenagers play soccer, and about 440,000 play basketball, more than 900,000 gamble. Despite the 18+ restriction on gambling, almost one in three (30%) 12-17-year-olds gamble. This increases to almost half (46%) of 18- and 19-year-olds, a rate that doesn’t decline until people are at least in their mid-20s. This means that the gambling habits young Australians develop when they are teenagers persist into adulthood.

Parents are well aware of the societal shift that has taken place since their youth. Not long ago, online gambling simply wasn’t an option, which means there was little incentive for gambling companies to saturate footy matches with so many ads that kids are now just as likely to discuss the odds as their favourite player. Free-to-air TV shows more than a million gambling ads a year, so it’s not surprising that 85 per cent of 12-17 year olds have seen a gambling ad on TV in the past month. Teenagers are growing up in a country with a serious gambling addiction. When all age groups are combined, Australians gamble more than any country in the world. 

The Murphy Review was clear that “Australians do not like being flooded by messages and inducements to gamble online and worry about the effect this is having on children and young people.” Australia Institute polling research shows that initiatives to ban gambling advertising would be popular. But without this kind of policy change, gambling will continue to be normalised among young people.