Sometimes elections turn things topsy turvy. When it comes to gas, who would have thought Peter Dutton would be the one to say the quiet bit out loud?

The Opposition Leader has effectively acknowledged that, contrary to the industry’s constant claims, Australia doesn’t have a gas shortage. We simply allow multinational companies to export gas that we own without considering domestic needs.

Here are the facts.

Past governments let multinational gas companies build giant gas export terminals on Australia’s east coast and sell gas into global markets.

The gas companies assured government this would have no impact on domestic prices. As former ACCC boss Rod Sims observed some years ago they hoodwinked the government. Domestic gas prices tripled and electricity prices soared.

Most of the gas produced in eastern Australia is now locked up in contracts the gas giants made with overseas customers. But they sell far more gas overseas than they need to fulfill these contracts.

Currently, the companies are selling that surplus gas on the lucrative global spot market instead of supplying it to Australian businesses and households.

At the same time, they are falsely claiming there is a gas shortage to justify new gas projects that are almost entirely for export.

Until now, a bipartisan political consensus let this situation continue, but it’s been smashed by Dutton’s policy about-face.

The Coalition is proposing that eastern Australian gas sold on global markets be reserved for domestic use. (WA has had a gas reservation policy for years).

It wants to put a charge or levy on Australian gas not locked up in long-term contracts that companies export.

The levy would be set at a level that makes it more financially rewarding to sell the gas into the domestic market than ship it offshore. That could shift gas equivalent to about 20 per cent of domestic demand from exports to domestic consumers.

It’s hard to overstate the absurdity of Australia’s, until now, bipartisan policy of allowing a handful of global corporations to export 70 per cent of east-coast gas, all the while telling Australians we have a shortage.

The industry uses more gas just running its export terminals than Australians use for electricity or manufacturing – and then price gouges us for our own gas.

Astonishingly, we ship so much gas to Japan it has a surplus. Japan now on-sells gas overseas, while Australia looks to develop import terminals to address an alleged looming “shortfall”.

Labor is trying to dismiss the Coalition’s gas policy as a distraction but, the truth is, it has left Labor out on a limb.

Most of Parliament – from independents and the Greens to Pauline Hanson – support the quarantining of gas to meet domestic needs.

That’s not to say that all the Coalition’s gas policy is worth supporting. It’s a curate’s egg – good in parts, but some of it stinks.

In a quid pro quo to the gas industry, the opposition is offering to speed up approvals for new gas developments and to restrict legal challenges.

This would be disastrous for democracy, the environment, farmers, and Australia’s cultural heritage. Gas development threatens the priceless ancient rock art of Murujuga.

To avoid climate catastrophe, the world needs to phase it out gas, along with oil and coal, not produce more of it. Domestically, gas demand is already falling.

Society taxes things it wants less of and subsidises things it wants to encourage. Taxation of gas is another area crying out for reform.

Australia gives away most of the gas it exports to a handful of multinational corporations. Nearly three-quarters of the gas exported from WA is given away royalty free.

In theory, the nation is compensated through the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax, but it’s so badly designed it has raised next to nothing. Young Australians pay more in HECs than the gas industry pays in PRRT, while Australian nurses and teachers pay more tax than the whole gas industry.

Now the consensus between the major parties is broken, Labor would be advised to get ahead of the Coalition on gas policy. It can’t credibly dismiss what it is doing as hot air.

Mark Ogge is principal adviser at The Australia Institute specialising in the gas industry and the impacts of climate change