More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia; Vantage Point 6

by Richard Denniss

The global gas industry has pulled off the greatest con in Australia's history, and we're living with the consequences. Australia is one of the richest countries in the world, but we have been made to feel so poor that we no longer even expect the high quality, freely available public schools and hospitals we used to have. But while we are told we can't afford to have good services, Australian governments give away billions of dollars worth of gas, for free, to multinational companies every year.


When the price of oil surges, Saudis feel rich. When the price of gas surges, Qataris and Norwegians feel rich. But in Australia when the price of gas surges around the world we are told we must tighten our belts to cope with surging electricity prices.


Successive governments have given away our gas to foreign companies for free and excused them from paying tax – and then asked us to say thank you when companies choose to do business in Australia. In this essay Richard Denniss pulls back the curtain to show how the gas companies performed a long con in Australia and spells out the simple steps we need to take to fix it.

128 pages, Paperback

Published August 4, 2026

About the author

Richard Denniss is the Chief Economist and former Executive Director of The Australia Institute. He is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and a former Adjunct Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Dr Denniss was described by Mark Kenny in the Sydney Morning Herald as "a constant thorn in the side of politicians on both sides due to his habit of skewering dodgy economic justifications for policy".

Reviews

[Rupert Osborn]

Great little essay that simply and clearly outlines the issue and discredits some of the arguments against a gas tax.
The gas industry producing 24% of our emissions and accounting for 0.3% is nasty.
Most interesting was the debunking of GDP as a useful measure for whether the gas industry are actually contributing to Australia.

[Greg]

Excellent short book explaining how Australia has been ripped off by foreign gas companies for decades - mainly because the government doesn't tax them properly.

[Cameron Turner]

A valuable, informative short read

[Dana Pepcak]

Should be every Australian voter’s compulsory reading!

[Pippa]

Errrm, given the public discourse back in aus right now people should already be primed to like this book…Which frankly makes its average-ness even more obvious.

It’s 100 pages which is about 90 pages too long for the points it is making. Or maybe that’s the problem, it wasn’t really making any points as far as I could tell.. it’s not actually going into any issues with the PRRT and how it could be better designed, it’s also not talking about how the Australian gas industry and our royalty system compares to similar nations or could learn from approaches in other countries. It offers no tangible solutions or actionable recommendations.

Literally half the book is dumbed down explanations of basic macroeconomic indicators and at one point even explaining an ‘average’ (curious use of space in a 100 page book!). And the other half is having a whinge about the government. I don’t mind a whinge if it’s constructive or original, but this wasn’t.

I picked it up because I wanted to become more informed about Australia’s domestic gas debate and hear some different perspectives. This book didn’t deliver. I walked away feeling $18 poorer and without a single new insight about Australia’s gas tax.

I’m not sure who the intended audience is but I think it missed the mark.. it seems to be targeting people who don’t understand averages yet are nerdy enough to pick up this book…. If such people exist?