If Australia's resources were taxed the way Norway's are, we could secure the future of our schools

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was quick to scotch rumours recently that he was set to increase taxation on oil and gas mining in this year’s budget, despite indications that the outcome of a current treasury review could recommend changes to the application of the petroleum resource rent tax.

The fact that the current Senate inquiry into Australia’s oil and gas reserves has pushed its reporting date back, from 1 March to 16 September, also suggests that any decision to reform this notoriously ineffective tax is being put in the “too hard basket” by the government.

This is unsurprising, given the general reluctance of the government to undertake a meaningful restructuring of our tax base, but especially given the fear of taxing the profits of multinational companies that extract Australia’s natural resources.

Indeed, the unwillingness of our political leaders to grapple with serious tax reform arguably can be traced to the Rudd government’s disastrous attempt to implement a minerals resource rent tax in 2010.

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Facing trenchant opposition from the mining industry, Rudd’s signature tax policy fell at the first hurdle and was a major contributing factor to his ousting as prime minister in June that year. It was then resurrected by Julia Gillard, but with concessions to the mining industry so extreme as to render it virtually useless.

That the Australian people receive so little recompense for the extraction and export of our natural resources is indefensible. Australia is one of the most resource-rich nations on Earth: latest data from the Reserve Bank of Australia shows that mining makes up 10% of our economic output, and 60% of our exports.

A recent report found that “Australia exported an estimated 75.1m tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 2018-19” and that, by 2020, we will overtake Qatar as the largest exporter of LNG in the world.

Yet we earn only around $600m in annual taxes from LNG exporters, compared with Qatar’s take of more than $26bn.

Exporters of our natural resources are essentially engaged in asset sales. These assets, which can only be sold once, belong to all Australians, and the failure of our taxation system to secure a reasonable share of their value for the common good is an abject failure of policy makers.

A submission to a 2018 Senate Economics References Committee inquiry into corporate tax avoidance demonstrated the scale of forgone revenue resulting from the extraordinarily lax fiscal regime that governs resource rents in Australia.

Juan Carlos Boué, a researcher at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, found that, in the decade since 2008, Australia has imposed an effective tax rate (ETR) of 21% on gross industry income from petroleum exploration and production.

Boué calculated that, if that income “had attracted the ETRs which oil and gas activities attracted in Denmark and Norway during this same period (49 and 54%, respectively), then the Australian federal government would have received an additional US$71 or 84bn” in revenue.

We should be demanding a much higher return on the profits of the multinational mining companies that extract and export our non-renewable energy resources.

Yet to use the potential windfall to prop up the disappearing budget surplus, or to engage in further regional pork-barrelling, as has been suggested, would be yet another exercise in short-term politics at the expense of an unparalleled opportunity to invest in Australia’s future prosperity.

The forgone revenue as calculated by Boué is more than double the cost over a decade of fully funding the Gonski education plan.

The increased revenue from a uniform national resource rent tax, at an internationally competitive rate significantly higher than our current 21% ETR, could underpin a genuinely transformational approach to education funding, through a long-term investment vehicle to provide a secure source of revenue, quarantined from political interference.

The funding of education in Australia is a mess. It is highly politicised, with successive governments of both major parties acquiescing to the demands of wealthy independent schools rather than prioritising the right of all Australian children, no matter their socio-economic background, to a high-quality education.

The proceeds from a uniform national resource rent tax should be spent initially on directly funding the Gonski school education plan, with the remaining revenue wholly invested in a sovereign wealth fund dedicated to funding school education.

The Education Future Fund could be administered alongside Australia’s other sovereign wealth funds, by the Future Fund. Managed prudently, its proceeds could, within a decade, sustainably fund Australia’s school education sector in perpetuity, even beyond the natural end of demand for non-renewable energy resources.

Opposition from the Australian mining sector to a uniform national resource rent tax set at a rate comparable with other jurisdictions would, of course, be vociferous.

However, it is doubtful that a campaign against a well-designed resource rent tax would find as receptive an audience as it did in 2010.

The annual Per Capita tax survey, which has been conducted since 2010, consistently shows the vast majority of Australians believe that corporate tax avoidance is unfairly skewing our tax system.

A policy to recoup our fair share of the proceeds from resource asset sales for investment in the education of our kids would likely find favour with people worried about low wage growth, high house prices and increased costs of living.

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Further, the mining boom is over, and an industry campaign against a “great big new tax” would likely fall on fallow ground. Its success in 2010 was largely due to the industry’s ability to portray itself as a major employer, but since 2012, employment in mining has fallen by almost 20%. It’s much harder for mining billionaires in 2020 to make the case that a tax on their profits is a tax on the incomes of working Australians.

If the proceeds of the RRT were invested securely in a sovereign wealth fund, the populace could be convinced that their money, coming from the sale of their assets, was being prudently and independently invested for the betterment of their children’s futures.

In short, selling such a policy should be achievable for any politician serious about investing in the future of the nation.

While it’s far from the wholesale structural tax reform the country needs, a properly structured uniform national resource rent tax is long overdue.

By using it to create an independent sovereign wealth fund to secure the future funding of our education system, policy makers could create a widely supported, sustainable means of providing every Australian child with the best chance in life.

• Emma Dawson is executive director of public policy thinktank Per Capita