This week, the pattern repeated itself. A Senate inquiry into gas taxation heard former Treasury secretary Ken Henry tell the committee to act in language stripped of all diplomatic niceties: “In the national interest, just do it and stop the crap the Australian public have put up with for decades.”

Shell admitted contributing to a $5 million industry advertising campaign against the tax. Woodside and Chevron argued the system should not be touched. Within 24 hours, the Albanese government folded. A handful of senators and independents held the line. Most of the political class did not.

The numbers are damning. Japan — a country with no gas of its own — collects more tax from Australian gas exports than Australia does. Japan’s energy import tax averages $8 billion a year; our Petroleum Resource Rent Tax raised just $1.4 billion.

Despite LNG revenues surging by $47.7 billion over the past decade, PRRT revenue was actually lower last year than ten years ago. Six of the ten companies that exported $165 billion worth of LNG from Gladstone have paid zero company tax. As Senator Pocock put it: Australians pay more tax on beer than gas giants pay on tens of billions in exports.

When Norway discovered oil in the late 1960s, Jens Evensen made sure it chose the right path. A Labour politician, wartime resistance fighter, and formidable legal mind, he took on foreign oil corporations, outmanoeuvred neighbouring countries in shelf negotiations, and when necessary, fought his own parliamentary colleagues.

The result was a sovereign wealth fund now worth over $3 trillion. Evensen was not a consensus figure. He was a fighter who happened to be on the right side.

Australia has never made that choice properly. We pay twice for our failure: once through weak resource capture, and again through higher energy prices and public subsidies to the same industry.

The question is not just whether we are being ripped off on gas. It is whether we are about to repeat the same mistake with Queensland and Western Australia’s vast deposits of rare earths, vanadium, cobalt, copper, helium, and other critical minerals.

Konrad Benjamin, the former school teacher behind the Punters Politics social media platform, put his finger on why this keeps happening. Appearing before the inquiry — representing the first crowd-funded citizen lobbyist campaign in Australian Senate history — he asked the obvious question: if Australia holds all the cards, how is it that we keep losing?

His answer: MPs are supposed to be the lobbyists for ordinary people, but Australians had been forced to hire someone to do their job for them. The reason they keep failing is not hard to find.

The revolving door between political power and fossil fuel profit is structural, not accidental. Alexander Downer, as Foreign Minister, ordered intelligence agencies to bug Timor-Leste’s cabinet room to give Australia the upper hand in Timor Sea gas negotiations — then took a lucrative consultancy with Woodside after leaving office.

Labor’s Martin Ferguson served as resources minister then joined the board of oil and gas company BG Group. Liberal Ian MacFarlane served as resources minister then became CEO of the Queensland Resources Council lobby. The pattern runs across both parties and explains why reform is proposed, industry mobilises, and politicians retreat.

This week’s capitulation came despite unprecedented internal pressure. Labor’s own Environment Action Network backed better returns. Labor backbencher Ed Husic called the current deal an “obscenely sweet” arrangement. The former Treasury secretary appointed by Labor told the committee to act. None of it was enough.

The LNP and Coalition remain aligned with industry. One Nation claims to speak for ordinary Australians while sitting close to Rinehart and Palmer. The Greens and independents like Pocock are the only consistent voices arguing these resources belong to the public.

The Senate inquiry reports on 7 May. A 25 per cent gas export tax is a fair starting point — but Norway shows the real answer is broader: higher rent taxes, public equity in major projects, domestic processing, a sovereign wealth fund, and the closing of the revolving door between ministerial power and industry reward.

The $5 million advertising campaign mounted against this inquiry shows exactly why donation and lobbying rules need urgent reform.

Labor members should demand their government stops retreating. Coalition members should ask why the national interest keeps giving way to industry pressure.

One Nation voters should ask whether their party fights for Australians or for mining wealth. And all Australians should ask why the politicians who approve these deals so often end up on the payroll of the companies that benefit.

Australia does not need more slogans. It needs a resource policy worthy of a sovereign nation — and politicians with the courage, like Evensen, to fight for it against both the industry and, when necessary, their own side.