Something happened in the Senate this week. It didn't change the law, but it revealed something important about the politics of gas in Australia-the old political lines are starting to blur.

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Independent ACT Senator David Pocock moved a motion calling for an inquiry into "Why Gas Companies Pay Less for Offshore Liquefied Natural Gas than Australians Pay in Beer Excise". It's the kind of thing the Senate, as the house of review, examines all the time. Yet the response from Parliament revealed a lot about the current state of politics.

The motion was supported by an unlikely coalition of independents, the Greens, and One Nation. On an issue that usually splits along predictable ideological lines, politicians from across the political spectrum were aligned.

The major parties, however, failed the test. Labor voted against the inquiry. The Coalition, including new Nationals leader Matt Canavan, did not even turn up to vote.

In doing so, they avoided answering a question many Australians are now asking: why does one of the world's largest gas exporters collect so little tax from the industry extracting its resources?

Australia is one of the world's biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas. Our offshore gas fields generate enormous profits for multinational corporations. Yet the public return on these resources is astonishingly small.

The petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT), the main mechanism for taxing offshore gas projects, was supposed to ensure Australians received a fair share of profits from resources owned by the public. Resources we can only sell once. Instead, gas companies are raking in record profits, while ordinary Australians pay the price.

At the same time, governments are still subsidising the industry. Australian fossil fuel subsidies are growing faster than the NDIS. New research from the Australia Institute shows Australian governments will provide $16.3 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in 2025-26. That works out to about $31,000 per minute handed to coal, oil and gas companies.

As Rod Campbell, research director at the........

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