Australia is one of the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas.

Over the past 25 years, the value of those exports has increased more than 20-fold. Yet revenue from the tax designed to capture the extraordinary profits made from petroleum resources has gone backwards.

This week, at its national conference, the Labor Party formally acknowledged that Australians deserve a “fairer return” from the resources beneath their land and seas.

But the party stopped short of backing the policy that forced the issue onto the agenda: A 25 per cent tax on gas exports that supporters say could raise up to $17 billion a year.

Today, Australia Institute co-chief executive Richard Denniss, on the unlikely alliance pushing Labor to take on the gas industry – and whether the party’s carefully chosen words will ever become an actual tax.

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