2026-03-25
Corporations finding wealth in the wreckage
By Senator Larissa Waters, Leader of the Australian Greens
A global tragedy is becoming a corporate payday. The Greens have opened the door for a significant new tax on gas exports, which would return billions to Australians and ease cost-of-living pressures… but does the government have the courage to act?
There are moments when a single thread is pulled, and the entire tapestry starts to fall apart.
Over the past month, we’ve seen Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s illegal war with Iran escalate across the region, costing the lives of schoolgirls in their classrooms, injuring and terrifying civilians, and creating global instability around safety, transport and fuel security.
Australia may be thousands of kilometres away, but we have been drawn into this conflict step by step — first through political endorsement, then through the presence of our military personnel, and now through the growing impact this war is having on people here at home.
When bombs fall, civilians pay first, and they pay the most. That is true for people in Iran and across the region facing immediate violence.
But it is also true here.
Because war doesn’t stay contained. It ripples outward. And those ripples hit people’s everyday lives.
Here at home, people are already paying the price through rising fuel costs, higher prices at the supermarket, and growing economic pressure. At the same time, corporate profits surge.
For gas companies like Woodside and Santos, this is like Christmas, Easter, and their birthdays have all come at once.
We’ve seen this pattern before. In moments of crisis, prices go up, and so do profits for the companies that control essential goods like energy, banking and food.
During the war in Ukraine, gas exporters earned $92.8 billion in a single year. That’s not an accident. It’s how the system is set up.
War and instability create the conditions for price spikes. Corporations pass those costs on, and then some. Meanwhile, everyday people are left absorbing the pressure: at the petrol pump, in their rent, and at the checkout.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We have written to the Prime Minister with a clear offer to pass a 25% levy on gas exports, a step that would raise around $17 billion each year, and likely more as prices rise.
As fuel prices surge, households are forced to spend more just to get to work, school, and appointments. The $17 billion in revenue raised by a levy on gas exports could easily fund measures that would provide immediate relief to people, such as free public transport. Free public transport in the cities would be immediate cost of living relief - and would free up fuel for farmers and families in the regions.
Our letter to the PM calls for the federal government to step in and fund the states to make public transport free during the fuel crisis, while driving down fares long-term.
This would take pressure off household budgets immediately and reduce reliance on expensive fuel. I’m proud that our colleagues in the ACT Greens worked to pass a similar measure through that parliament this week.
Beyond free public transport, this $17 billion in revenue could easily be dedicated to urgent cost-of-living relief measures. Millions of Australians are doing it tough, and these rich corporations should not get a free ride while people are going backwards.
That is public money, generated from resources that belong to Australians.
Right now, those profits are flowing to a handful of corporations. They could instead be used to ease cost-of-living pressures, fund services people rely on, and ensure households aren’t left carrying the burden alone.
Instead, Labor, the Liberals and One Nation remain wedded to the interests of big corporations and billionaires, protecting a system that allows profits to surge while people fall behind.
What we are seeing is a system where crises are turned into opportunities, but not for ordinary people. They are opportunities for the wealthiest.
When shocks hit, prices rise quickly. Wages do not keep up. The gap between what people earn and what things cost continues to grow, and inequality deepens as a result.
That is why so many people feel like they are falling behind, no matter how hard they work.
But this is not inevitable. It is the result of political choices.
Right now, we are allowing wars and global instability to push up costs while corporations capture the gains. That can change.
The Greens will keep pushing our government to use its diplomatic might to urge peace and an end to this illegal war in the Middle East, rather than supporting and resourcing the war.
And we are fighting to rewrite the rules so that the wealth generated by big corporations and billionaires is shared more fairly.
We’re pushing to make gas corporations pay their fair share, to take on corporate profiteering, and to make sure that when the world becomes more unstable, people are supported and protected, not squeezed.
Because this should be a system that works for people, not one that profits from their pressure.