Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (20:09): Yesterday I rose and spoke about the Governor-General's speech. I don't want to repeat what I said yesterday, but in general terms I found that the Governor-General's speech, which of course is the government's speech, was something that was pretty uninspiring. It laid out a bunch of housekeeping things that Australia needed to keep doing, but there was no vision in there. There was nothing in there that would excite Australians into thinking that we have a way forward that's going to be really good for everyone. One thing I did talk about, however, was some concerns I had regarding the extraction and export of Australia's oil and gas resources by multinational companies across Australia without Australia maximising the benefit from these finite resources. I want to expand on those concerns that I raised yesterday. The Australian economy has a high dependency on the extraction and supply of natural resources, of which our oil and gas sector is a significant component. In 2018, natural gas and crude petroleum combined represented an 11.7 per cent share of Australia's total exports. The discovery and extraction of oil and gas have delivered substantial benefits to many nations around the world. Senator McKenzie: Hear, hear! Senator PATRICK: Don't get too excited yet, Senator McKenzie. When people think of crude oil and the petroleum industry, an image is conjured up of the Middle East, sheikhs and a region that's gone from nomadic tribes roaming the desert with camels to gold-plated supercars racing down multilane highways. That is something of an exaggeration, but it is true to say that countries that have significant oil and gas resources are generally pretty well off. As we develop the resources and extract them, we get some general advantages. It doesn't matter what country you're in; you get infrastructure advantages, both directly from the facilities and indirectly. You get roads and other things that might lead to facilities; you get jobs, both direct and indirect; and you get the local expenditure on goods and services. What I want to focus on here and now is the taxes and royalties that come from the extraction of oil and gas, the money that gets returned to consolidated revenue in exchange for the extraction and exporting of these resources. That's my focus. I want to caveat things a little bit. I will give some comparisons between what happens here in Australia and what happens in other jurisdictions. It's not quite apples and apples. I am not going to pretend that I'm giving direct comparisons. I just want to give the chamber a bit of an idea. On the home front, particularly in the federal space, there are two tax elements on the oil and gas industry. We have corporate tax and we have PRRT, petroleum resource rent tax. To give you an idea of a corporate tack, it is a bit of a shocker. I just want people to get a feel for what the story is. According to tax transparency data, ExxonMobil Australia, over four years, earned $33 billion in revenue. Guess how much tax they paid? Zero. That's not a good return for the Australian taxpayer. Origin Energy earned $51 billion and paid about $108 million in tax. Shell earned $52 billion in revenue over four years and paid $1.1 billion in tax. I can see Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle shaking his head a little bit. It gets worse, sorry. I know that total revenue is not taxable income—I get that—but, whatever way you look at this, there's not much of a return to the Australian taxpayers. In Australia, income to the state from the oil and gas sector is dominated by multinationals, and the bottom line is that it's substantially lower than one would expect. In the 2016-17 financial year, three of the larger entities, ExxonMobil Australia—I've mentioned them already—Chevron Australia Holdings and ConocoPhillips Australia Gas Holdings had a combined turnover of $11.6 billion and paid zero corporate tax. In terms of PRRT, it's a little bit difficult because there's not a lot of data out there that you can draw on for a comparison, but it's pretty sobering. Across the same year, 2016-17, those entities that I mentioned before also paid zero dollars in PRRT. So they're taking this finite resource, extracting it and exporting it, and we're getting pretty much nothing other than those things I talked about—jobs, indirect jobs and so forth. I went looking to see what happens elsewhere. I found that Norway was a particularly interesting case. As far back as 1972 the Norwegian parliament established a collection of principles to be applied in the development of Norwegian oil. These principles included: (1) national supervision and control must be ensured for all operations on the Norwegian continental shelf; (2) petroleum discoveries must be exploited in a way that makes Norway as independent as possible in its supply of crude oil; (3) the development of an oil industry must take necessary account of the protection of nature and the environment. Of course they're all important things. On top of that there's an underlying understanding that the state must aim for the greatest possible share of economic benefit which can be provided to the broader community. I want to run through the 2018-19 figures. Once again I have moved years around, I accept that, but it's the order of magnitude that will shock the chamber. In 2018-19—remembering those numbers I talked about before in Australia—the taxes paid by Equinor were A$22 billion. They also paid environmental taxes and fees of about $1 billion. And because it's a state owned company, the dividend paid to the state by Equinor was about $3 billion. These are huge amounts of money, and that is but one example. By the way, money goes from Equinor into a Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. I encourage everyone to google the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund and have a look at it. They have a big number showing on the screen. You really have to focus on the number of zeros. But I can tell you that there is over $1 trillion sitting in their wealth fund. It is deemed to be the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. The point I'm making is that right now in Australia we are struggling in terms of getting revenue out of oil and gas, and I think we need to change that. I don't think we need to change it the way that we did on the last sitting day of the last parliament, when we tweaked the PRRT. There are a number of national oil and gas companies around the world, such as China National Petroleum Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation, Korean National Oil Company, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. There is a long list of these companies that are national companies set up to extract and export their oil and gas and return a significant amount back to their consolidated revenue. We are doing something wrong. I am not suggesting that we go in and nationalise or set up a national oil company, but I am not saying that we shouldn't. Tomorrow I will be lodging a motion, for consideration on Thursday, for us to look, by way of an inquiry, into how we might do things better, informed by what other jurisdictions do. Senator O'Neill: Like an MRRT, Senator, that great Labor idea? Senator PATRICK: I actually want to explore this. I want to explore this in an inquiry because I do not think we are getting the best that we can. There is so much we could do with the sort of money that Equinor returns to the Norwegian state. We are not doing well. We need to rethink it. I am not talking about a tweak; I am talking about a rethink. We need to rethink it with regard to sovereign risk and property rights. It is important that we reconsider what we are doing.