Woodside Petroleum got good value for its money yesterday. The WA Liberals have come through for them on the removal of the condensate excise exemption. Having already delivered a Coalition position against the tax, yesterday they provided a dissenting Senate committee report against the removal, and at a press conference yesterday Julie Bishop, four WA Senators and Michael Keenan vowed to die in a ditch for Woodside.
A good return for the $25,000 Woodside donated to the WA Liberals last year.
While announcing a record half-year profit yesterday of over $1 billion, Woodside boss Don Voelte was saying the removal of the condensate excise exemption would be passed on to consumers in the next few months.
Which presumably means that Woodside’s Eve Howell, the CEO of North West Shelf Venture, misled the Senate committee inquiry into the removal when she said “we in general have no ability to pass on this additional impost” due to the long-term contracts in place.
One hopes that Coalition senators will pursue this apparent contempt of the Senate, or at least issue a please-explain to Woodside about the discrepancy. After all, it was on the basis of such evidence that Brendan Nelson embarrassingly declared last week that the removal would not be passed on to consumers.
Or perhaps we can’t believe a word Woodside says. They are, after all, the biggest corporate sooks in Australia. Woodside executives can barely open their mouths without bleating, whingeing, complaining and lamenting how terrible everyone is being to them while they make billions in profits from Australian resources.
For example, Don Voelte is continuing to warn about “sovereign risk” over an emissions trading scheme. As Inigo Montoya might say, I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
There’s no “sovereign risk” when an issue like emissions trading has been on the political agenda for a decade, and when both major political parties went to the last election promising it. Perhaps they have a different understanding of sovereign risk in Voelte’s homeland, where business regard any departures from strict laissez faire economics as rank Stalinism.
Admittedly Voelte isn’t the only whinger at Woodside. It’s not so long since its security and emergency manager made unsubstantiated allegations that Commonwealth public servants were leaking confidential Woodside information. And there’s a long history of whingeing from Woodside. In 2004 it froze the Sunrise gas project over East Timor’s attempts to get a fairer deal over its maritime border with Australia, and is continuing to treat the East Timorese Government with contempt.
It’s all about “uncertainty”, for Woodside, although the certainty that it appears to want is that it will be permitted to do whatever it likes now and in the future. Like its attempts to prevent the heritage listing of 30,000 year old Aboriginal rock art on the Dampier Archipelago in 2006, on the basis that not merely would the listing somehow hinder its Pluto Gas project, but “hinder everything”.
The Pluto Project was the reason for Don Voelte’s extended whingeing about Alan Carpenter’s plan to quarantine 15-20% of WA gas supplies for domestic users in 2006.
And let’s not forget the biggest — and most successful — whinge of all, for the Federal Government to protect it from takeover by Shell in 2001 — another victory for WA Liberals.
Woodside’s behaviour is so outrageous even Resources Minister Martin Ferguson — usually to be found actively promoting the interests of Australia’s resources sector — is underwhelmed.
When he sees Don Voelte tomorrow for the resources sector’s whinge session about the ETS Green Paper in Canberra, Ferguson should tell him to dump the billion-dollar bitch act.
Your narrative over reaches here. Shell taking over Woodside would have been what Stephen Mayne would call another foreign ownership financial farce. But worse than that is Shell implicated in collusion with murderous dictatorship of the Niger Delta minorities by the Nigerian central govt. They never deserved to own Woodside and the high profits by Woodside later prove that. Not a whinge but a profoundly patriotic result. Call me an economic nationalist see if I care. Rex Connor would be pleased.
As for the South African – the Good Weekend recently did traverse his contribution to post Mandela release South African industry with a mining business of some kind over there. It said all the right words, so maybe this was a cheap shot in the comments. I wonder. Certainly it’s a small enough world for any skeletons there to be exposed. I take exception to attacking a person for their nationality. MLK says judge the man’s character.
Completely agree with Evan – the big mining companies seem to think they are doing us all a favour by exploiting our resources for vast amounts of money. They go on about all the royalties they pay but what about the cost of the infrastructure required to service the mining communities – we the taxpayers pay for the housing, hospitals, airports etc and they don’t come cheap. I too am sick of the whingeing. I am also sick of all these South Africans coming here and telling us what we should be doing. What are they all doing here anyway? Didn’t they like the new, no apartheid South Africa and not having a vast black African workforce to exploit?
Ditch Salesmen need to get their marketing up to the ‘irresistible’ with this elite client opportunity. $25,000 should be a target price, each. Dr Nelson can teach ‘ditch – long term – survival skills’ for free.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that to a large extent resource exploitation/management should be Federal controlled. In essence Woodside (and Gunns, Rio Tinto) are using our resources for personal/corporate gain. The resources in Australia are part of our collective heritage and mining them should be seen as a privilege not a right.
It does fly in the face of capatilist theory so surely some fiddling is required. But the nonsense of giving tax concessions, ETS rulings and general bending over to big resource exploiters must not go on. They’re not going to go overseas to mine Australian gas, and there’s that much money in it that if their business does actually fall over someone else will step into the breach. It’s a load of crap. And don’t get me started on political donations.
I am “Outraged”, are you trying to tell us that a lousy $25,000 can buy a brace of Liberals at state level? Next thing you’ll be trying to tell us that Bob Askin donated his squalid services to NSW free, gratis, and pro bono.