It was quite startling for many to find out that Australia, a country awash with gas, has its businesses and residents paying substantially more for its own gas than those same groups in Japan to where it is exported.

But one thing seems to have slipped past to the keeper, the fact we are making so little off those exports as a country.

In 2014 the other top four LNG producers made significantly more in government revenues from oil and gas exports than Australia which collected just 1.42% of production volumes. Qatar for instance made 4.8%, Malaysia 3.07%, Indonesia 3.34% and Nigeria 3.34%.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-22/australia-government-revenue-oil-and-gas-production/8043326

Just imagine what we could have done as a country with the extra 8 billion dollars in revenue we could have made that year if we had pegged our rate at even Malaysia's 3.07%.

For all those who got sucked in by Abbott's ranting about the mining tax and guys like billionaire Andrew Forrester in a workers t-shirt crying poor well the proof is in the pudding. You allowed big multinational companies to win the day and rip us off big time, to tie our gas up in long term contracts leaving our energy companies and businesses scrambling for over priced gas supplies, to spend millions of dollars buying both our politicians and our press, and finally to reap billions of dollars for overseas shareholders.

Hope you are satisfied.

Dear Steele,

But what are we to do about it now?

The following link might have some suggestions:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-20/ian-verrender-how-the-free-market-failed-australia/8368032

Dear Foxy,

«But what are we to do about it now?»

1. Buy candles!

2. Cut those eucalyptus forests that are going to uncontrollably burn anyway sooner or later and use that wood for heating and electricity generation!

3. Don't repeat this mistake ever again!

Dear Yuyutsu,

I've got a house full of candles.

But unfortunately I can't read by them.

And reading is one of the few pleasures I've got left.

Dear Foxy,

Yes, the quality of candles in Australia is quite poor, probably due to lack of demand, but that's going to change...
Meanwhile, try those multi-wick braided candles of better quality:
http://www.worldofjudaica.com.au/judaica/candles#!?sort=popularityDESC&page=0&f_item_type=825

Dear Foxy,

This is not only a failure of the market but a concerted attack on what should have been our sovereign wealth going to fund infrastructure, schools, hospitals and jobs but instead it ended up going to the pockets of large multinational shareholders. I would love to review just how much they shoveled into the pockets of not only the Coalition but people like Martin Ferguson.

They came, they bought our democracy, they got the repeal of the mining tax and all the while they were cheered on by the likes of the usual suspects on this forum.

It was shameful.