Every second, hundreds of dollars in resource wealth leave Australia — untaxed, unreturned, unrealised. Foreign corporations extracted it. Your government let them.
Two oil & gas exporting nations. Two completely different deals for their people.
Norway has accumulated 17× more in sovereign savings than Australia — from a smaller export base.
Over 90% of Australian mining projects have foreign ownership. On the largest gas project in the country, Australian ownership is exactly zero.
"The Big Australian"
Foreign-owned shares: 76%
Australian-owned: 24%
Headquartered in London
Foreign-owned shares: 83%
Australian-owned: 17%
Australia's largest gas project
Chevron 50% · Shell 25% · ExxonMobil 25%
Divided across all 10.8 million Australian households, the lost revenue works out to about $2,639 per household per year — enough to cover ~94% of the average combined energy bill.
Your share of the gap ($2,639) would cover 94% of your annual energy bill.
Every figure on this page comes from publicly available government data. Click any section to see the methodology and sources.
The headline number is the gap between what Australia currently collects from oil & gas, and what it would collect at Norway's 78% petroleum tax rate.
Divided across 31,557,600 seconds in a year: ~$903 / second.
The "all resources" comparison is muddier. Australia does collect more from mining generally because state royalties on iron ore and coal are higher than petroleum taxation. So a like-for-like with Norway has to be sector-for-sector: petroleum vs petroleum.
If you applied the same 78%-of-profit logic to all A$385B of resource exports, the gap would still be ~A$15B / year — about $475 / second. We've gone with the more conservative, more honest oil & gas figure.
BHP and Rio Tinto ownership splits are from share registry analyses; Gorgon LNG ownership is from the project's own published structure (Chevron 50%, Shell 25%, ExxonMobil 25%).
The "over 90% foreign ownership" figure is from The Australia Institute — Undermining Our Democracy: Foreign Corporate Influence Through the Australian Mining Lobby.
Bills sourced from Compare Club energy statistics and the Australian Energy Regulator. Household count from ABS Household and Family Projections.
The "94% coverage" is illustrative: if every dollar of the gap were directed to household energy subsidies, it would cover ~94% of the average combined annual energy bill.
| Data point | Source |
|---|---|
| Export values | Dept. of Industry — Resources & Energy Quarterly |
| Mining royalties | State/territory budget papers, ABS |
| PRRT revenue | Australian Taxation Office |
| Company tax (mining) | ATO Corporate Tax Transparency |
| Foreign ownership | The Australia Institute |
| Norway tax rates | Norwegian Petroleum Directorate |
| Norway fund value | Norges Bank Investment Management |
| Household energy bills | Australian Energy Regulator |
| Household count | ABS Household Projections |
Data last updated: —. Source release: —.
This isn't financial advice, a policy proposal, or an accusation against any specific company. Companies named operate within the law. The argument here is that the law itself is inadequate.
The Norway comparison shows what's possible, not what Australia must adopt. It's a benchmark, not a blueprint.
The first step is making the gap impossible to ignore. Help more Australians see it.
Your federal MP works for you. Tell them you've seen the numbers.
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