What the gas tax debate reveals about the industry
By Greta Carroll
Ahead of a major protest at Woodside’s AGM on Thursday, Conservation Council of Western Australia campaigner Greta Carroll questions whether growing momentum for a gas tax could signal the beginning of the end for the industry’s social license.
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Growing up in Western Australia, it was hard not to be shaped by the ruggedly beautiful landscapes, pristine beaches, barreling waves — and giant gas export industry.
If WA was a country, we would be the world’s third largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The gas industry’s influence is the water we swim in. Between widespread coral bleaching, toxic oil spills, dead dolphins, the sponsorship of footy teams, universities and museums, and endless plans for expansion, the gas industry is a constant presence in our lives.
But after observing for weeks the growing public outrage over how the gas industry is profiteering from overseas conflict while the rest of us suffer a cost of living crisis, I can’t help but wonder, is this the beginning of the end of the gas industry’s social license?
The gas tax conversation matters here, and not just because almost 80% of gas exported from WA does not attract royalties. It matters because for the first time, ordinary Western Australians are seeing straight through the guise of the gas industry.
By resisting reasonable calls for a 25% tax on gas exports, multinational companies are showing their deep unwillingness to be treated in line with every other business, industry or person in Australia. After all, we’re all expected to make a fair, reasonable, and proportional contribution to the nation’s economy.
By now we’ve all seen the figures about how little the gas industry gives compared to how much it takes and makes. When you look at the money trail it’s clear that the industry serves private investors and foreign interests, not Australians.
Japanese gas companies have more than 70 billion dollars worth of investments in Australian gas export projects like Browse, Scarborough, Barossa and the North West Shelf, and hold more than 70 seats on key climate and energy policy committees in Japan.
That goes a long way to explaining why the Japanese government has an import target for twice as much gas than the country is expected to use by 2040, most of which is coming from Australia. In 2024, Japan made more than 1 billion dollars on-selling Australian gas to other countries.
Increasing Australian gas exports has been sold as necessary to decarbonise Asia. But last year a state government-funded Deloitte report was leaked that warned the opposite — that Australian gas could crowd out renewables and delay the energy transition.
Japanese gas companies have met privately with Australian cabinet ministers and officials at least 24 times since the Labor Government’s election in 2022. It’s no wonder key tax, energy, climate and environment policies in Australia reflect the international gas lobby’s interests, not Australians.
The constant exploration, extraction and export of gas from Australia’s soils and seafloors is being driven by people with vested interests in exploiting Australia’s favourable tax system and natural resources. And successive Australian governments continue to enable it.
Gas giant Woodside Energy’s Annual General Meeting is on Thursday, an event that attracts growing protests and media attention with each passing year. Hundreds of people are expected to protest the company’s plan to develop the Browse gas field which sits underneath Scott Reef off the WA coast. This project would threaten countless endangered species and release 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon. Independent modelling warns it also risks making WA’s domestic gas prices four times higher than they already are.
I spend almost all my time in the ocean, on the ocean, or thinking about the ocean. The addictive power of the wind and the waves humbles me, demanding my respect, cajoling my attention. Our oceans, reefs and marine life cannot adapt to the amount of carbon we’re putting into the atmosphere nor sustain the scale of blasting, drilling and spills from the fossil fuel industry. That’s why I began campaigning against gas expansion.
Woodside’s proposed Browse project would involve drilling 57 gas wells into a pristine coral atoll; home to thousands of unique and endangered species. It would put the entire reef complex and surrounding ocean at risk of toxic spills and would involve seismic blasting the area for decades. All in the name of Woodside’s export profits.
The company spends a lot of money buying its relevance to Western Australian culture, considering it doesn’t contribute much. Woodside employs only 3,700 people here, that’s just 0.2% of the workforce. Revenue from Woodside’s North West Shelf (NWS) export facility accounted for less than 1% of WAs 2025 budget. That figure is set to decline while the company is expected to make 215 billion dollars exporting royalty-free gas from the NWS until 2070.
But you wouldn’t know that if you got off a plane in WA.
We’re home to the Woodside Dockers, the Woodside Nippers, the Woodside Museum and the Woodside Symphony Orchestra. Everywhere you go there are billboards, TV, radio, social media, Spotify and newspaper ads all connecting Woodside to Western Australian culture, things we love and institutions we rely on for integrity and education. The people branded in logos can’t say anything about it, while fossil-fuel driven climate change threatens kids’ futures and more sports games get cancelled due to extreme weather.
It’s a cartoonishly evil playbook: buy your relevance, control the cultural dialogue, reduce your income tax, and profit big from environmental destruction.
The gas tax debate has opened a window that’s giving ordinary Australians a far more complete picture of the industry, and the lengths companies like Woodside will go to to undermine the Australian economy, energy sovereignty, climate, ecosystems and a future beyond fossil fuels.
The Woodside AGM protest will be held at 8am on April 23rd at Kagoshima Park, Burswood.
About the author
Greta Carroll
Greta is a surfer, sailor and Sandgroper; passionate about restoring healthy ecosystems and bringing communities together to protect the landscapes that sustain them. She is a Senior Campaigner at the Conservation Council of Western Australia.
Nice work Greta. Let me pick up a shovel and help you. Hope that’s ok.
Like you, I’m a born and bred Western Australian. I have dived, surfed, fished, swam, loved, and lived a rare life in a place my father used to tell me with undeniable passion, was the best state, in the best country, in the world. What the f**k has happened?
Watching the broad daylight theft of our state’s resources makes me incandescently angry. Not only have our natural resources been plundered from beneath our feet, and then given away - almost literally - both our First Australians, and collectively, all Western Australians, have been completely ripped off by the cult of capitalism. We’ve been played like chumps, amateurs, and suckers, while the corporations of greed have filled their offshore vaults with plunder.
Capitalism seeks two things, and two things only, forever growth, and profit. Job done on that front. And its partner in crime, Neoliberalism, an equally toxic ideology, seeks to modify ownership, find loopholes in legal frameworks, and navigate around regulatory guardrails. The objective is to accelerate and amplify the extraction of finite resources. The collateral damage is Western Australia’s environment and Western Australian’s futures. Their strategy is simple, capture and corrupt politicians, then implement full resource extraction with minimal tax burdens or environmental constraints. And externalities are to be avoided, amortised or abrogated.
Grace Blakely called them Vulture Capitalists and that’s what they are. They wait for vulnerable prey (Western Australian Government) and then strip the carcass. They add nothing of value to people, places or planet. When the finite resource is extracted, they leave, and move onto the next finite resource.
And Western Australia is no Norway. There is no sovereign wealth fund being set up to secure every citizen’s future here. The financially astute left the room while the gas (and other resources) contracts were inked. Meanwhile, 420,000 Western Australians (1 in 7) are living in poverty. Even more shockingly, four out of every ten people are living in wage-earning households - say that slowly - and yet, the value extracted from our natural assets is traded away beneath our feet, while our environment is raped and our inter-generational wealth is stolen.
The failure is systemic, it is epic, and it is criminal. And it’s time I came home.
Ends.