I live in a kleptocracy

The great gas scam

For many decades, Australian governments of all persuasions have eased the way, oiled the tracks, subsidised, bribed and paid national and multinational companies to search for hydrocarbons. Australia is on the cusp of becoming the world's largest exporter of gas. How does this industry repay its loyal government investors? These multinational companies are selling gas on international markets at prices below a third of that which it is extracting from Australian buyers. This makes it increasingly impossible for Australian industry to compete on the international markets or even the Australian market. This is what I call gratitude.

But perhaps I have missed the point, maybe these national and international hydrocarbon giants are accumulating vast profits which they will in turn pay as taxes to the Australian government. At least this would even out the price distortions and return Australian producers to a something like a level playing field. Yes, they are pigs and they are flying.

Chevron, Woodside, Shell, Santos and the rest of them won't be paying anything like a proper return on their gas sales to the Australian government in the next decade - if ever. These hydrocarbon companies have through a series of transfer pricing schemes, tax havens, tax write offs (in return for exploration) and simple corruption have set in place virtual tax free income generation schemes for the foreseeable future.

What do such policies do to the fabric of Australian society?

One obvious feature of community interactions now compared with when I was a teenager, 50 years ago, is that trust is eroded between individuals and groups. Dog eat dog mentality, greed is good, belief in trickle-down economics and tax cuts for the affluent are the order of the day. It sometimes bubbles to the surface with the likes of Mossack Fonseca and the Panamanian offshore money laundering revelations; or the more recent tax office tax indiscretions of relatives of high ranking tax officials.

But I hear you murmur, "What about the cherry picking superannuation schemes and the bottom of the harbour tax rorts?" What about the "Painters and the Dockers?" "Didn't Normie Gallagher get a beach house or two?" I have to concede that corruption has always existed but not nearly on the scale it does at present.

At one level, I would not be particularly perturbed if some level of pickpocketing from the public purse was occurring. I have an even more pressing concern and that is how the well off and those who would emulate them have turned against those who are forced to rely on social security and those who have come to this county on boats seeking asylum.

We have seen from Transfield onwards corporate entities being paid by Liberal and Labor administrations to slowly drive asylum seekers who have arrive by boat insane. In the next month they will start demolishing the refugee accommodation on Manus in an attempt to force asylum seekers to accept refoulement to the countries from which they fled or resettlement in Papua New Guinea.

Australian citizens without work are subjected to increasingly cruel assessment procedure in order to see who can be refused assistance. This is the present day equivalent of 12^th century poor house law. Yet, this is 21^st century Australia and the two ministers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter who are responsible for the administration of such regimes should be tried for crimes against humanity.