● Watson Foundation rams Norwegian krill trawler in Antarctic waters   ♦ Murdoch empire holds 70% of print circulation   ♦ Australia gave away $300B in gas — Norway built a sovereign wealth fund   ♦ Kerry Stokes: mining magnate, media owner, political donor   ♦ Negative gearing costs taxpayers $6B per year   ♦ How they killed the mining tax   ♦ The revolving door between politics and media

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Resources

The wealth leaving through the resources beat.

Gas revenue foregone · since 2022/07/01
A$68,017,708,800
▲ ~A$537/sec · Punter's Politics / Rort tracking, since 1 Jul 2022
Hover the offshore nodes · click to open a dossier
THE RORT · LIVING MODEL OF POWER · THE DESKDESK LIVE — TRACKING
BEAT / RESOURCESGAS, MINING, PUBLIC WEALTH15 INVESTIGATIONS · 3 CASES

Resources

Australia's natural wealth and who gets to keep it. The gas that was given away, the taxes that were never collected, and the sovereign fund that was never built.

02 / The evidence

Australia's Gas Heist · 11
01We gave away the gasAustralia is one of the largest LNG exporters on earth. Australians pay more for their own gas than buyers in Tokyo. The companies that take it pay almost no royalties…02What Norway builtNorway and Australia both discovered oil and gas. Both had booms. Both watched multinationals extract billions of dollars from their continental shelves. Norway taxed …03Beer, HECS, and the broken taxAustralia has a special tax designed to make sure citizens benefit from gas super-profits. It collects less than the beer excise. Australians repay their university de…04Who profitsAustralia’s gas is mostly extracted by foreign multinationals. Their profits flow offshore. The executives running those companies earn millions annually. In one case,…05The political connectionsThe gas industry donated at least A$3.98 million to Australia’s major political parties in the year before the 2025 election. The minister who approved Queensland’s LN…06The east coast gas cartelAustralia exports gas to Japan, where it is resold for profit. It exports gas to South Korea. It exports gas everywhere, and in doing so has created a domestic energy …07The decommissioning rortWhen Australia’s offshore gas platforms are eventually shut down, someone has to pay to remove hundreds of kilometres of pipelines, thousands of wells, and millions of…08How they killed the mining taxIn 2010, a Prime Minister tried to make the mining industry pay a fair price for public resources. The industry spent A$22 million in six weeks. The Prime Minister was…09Gas and climate: the final rortAustralia dropped its bid to host the world’s most important climate conference weeks before it was finalised. It did so while providing A$14.9 billion per year in fos…10What the media covers and howA video about beer and gas tax was watched 8.7 million times. Not because a newspaper published a front-page investigation, but because a senator posted it to Instagra…11Why nothing changesThe gas rort has been documented for more than a decade. The PRRT has been reviewed, reformed, and reformed again. The case for change is not in dispute. Yet the syste…
The Airline Rort · 3
01The fareAustralia's domestic aviation market is one of the most concentrated in the developed world. Two airline groups control 94–99 per cent of all domestic flights. Load fa…04Who owns the airportsAustralia's major airports are private monopolies. They face no competition. They are monitored by the ACCC but not price-regulated. They earn EBITDA margins that reac…06The frequent flyer financial machineQantas Frequent Flyer has 15 million members, about half the Australian adult population. In the financial year to June 2024, the Loyalty division generated A$2.6 bill…
Media Ownership · 1
02The mining company that owns your newsKerry Stokes controls a A$10.74 billion industrial empire selling Caterpillar equipment to mines and holding the largest stake in an oil and gas company. He also owns …

Nobody curates this desk. It is assembled from every investigation that touches resources — the moment The Rort publishes another, it appears here, and the names that keep surfacing rise on their own.

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