Australian Parliament: Gas prices, small business row dominate question time

Parliament convened on an ordinary Wednesday, but the day's questions revealed a government under pressure on multiple fronts—energy policy, small business regulation, and the machinery of tax administration all drawing fire from the opposition benches.

Resources Minister Madeleine King fielded the first sustained challenge over the government's gas reservation scheme, which requires producers to set aside 20 percent of their output for domestic use. Asked when Australian households and businesses might see lower energy bills as a result, King confirmed the policy would eventually reduce prices by introducing modest oversupply into the market. She offered no timeline. There would be an implementation year before any relief materialized, she said, but the government remained focused on ensuring Australians had access to affordable gas. The answer satisfied no one demanding specifics, but it was the answer she gave.

Small Business Minister Anne Aly absorbed a barrage of criticism that consumed much of question time. Liberal MP Mary Aldred opened by claiming Labor members themselves were sounding alarms about Aly's "war on small business." Aly responded with statistics: 385,000 businesses were added to the economy last year, she said, and 1.4 million have been registered since Labor took office—35 percent higher than under the previous government and 2.5 times higher than under Howard. Insolvencies, she noted, now run at roughly half the rate they averaged under Howard. Nationals MP Alison Penfold pressed the same line, quoting an unnamed Labor source unhappy about "compounding attacks on small business." Aly repeated her defense, citing the permanent $20,000 instant asset write-off and two-year loss carry-back as measures businesses told her had made a material difference.

The day's most volatile moment came earlier when Liberal MP Angie Bell's language about Aly drew immediate rebuke. Bell had called for the prime minister and small business minister to be "shamed and stoned" over the Australian Taxation Office's now-paused ban on credit card payments for tax bills. She later issued a statement saying she had used "a poor choice of words in the heat of the moment" and confirmed she had reached out to Aly, though the two had not yet spoken. Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume characterized the phrase as "clumsy" and called the resulting controversy "a storm in a teacup," a distraction from what she framed as Aly's actual failings as small business minister.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers addressed the credit card payment saga directly, denying that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had overruled him. Albanese had revealed that ACCI chief executive Andrew McKellar texted him Thursday morning, and within 24 hours the ban was delayed. Chalmers said he and the prime minister had discussed the matter Wednesday and held the same view: the ATO needed a longer transition period to implement the policy correctly. He had been involved in discussions with ACCI at office level, he said. Both men wanted the same outcome.

King also defended the Beetaloo Basin gas project, which she had celebrated at its first tap last month in the Northern Territory. Asked whether she was personally comfortable with decades of annual emissions from the facility, she said the emissions were "accounted for and offset" under the federal safeguard mechanism, which captures facilities emitting above a certain volume. A recent High Court decision had forced New South Wales to reconsider climate impacts on fossil fuel approvals, but King made clear this would not affect federal decisions. The federal government, she explained, had no legislative requirement to consider scope 3 emissions—the downstream emissions from burning the fuel—so the ruling simply did not apply to Commonwealth approvals.

Elsewhere, the government faced legislative headwinds. Labor's digital duty of care bill, expected to be introduced tomorrow, is likely to be referred to a Senate inquiry despite government confidence it could pass by year's end. The Greens want the bill examined before voting, while the Coalition refuses to negotiate, calling for it to be scrapped entirely. On the trust tax—a 30 percent minimum levy on discretionary trusts—the Coalition pushed for a committee inquiry in the House and lost, but the Greens have signaled they want the same thing in the Senate, where they hold the balance of power. An auditor general's report found Victoria's fire authorities need $1.5 billion over the next decade to replace aging fleets but have received only $390.4 million in current and future funding. The Nationals, meanwhile, sent pineapple juice to Labor MPs as a stunt against proposed imports from India and Indonesia, warning of biosecurity risks and unfair competition to Australian growers.