Hydro-electric billions earmarked for projects but Queensland not showing 'whole picture'
Billions of dollars have been earmarked for hydro-electric power projects across the state in the Crisafulli government's first budget.
"We're seeing pieces of the investment that will be necessary, but not the whole picture," said Queensland Conservation Council director David Copeman.
Projects include the Borumba Pumped Hydro Project, west of the Sunshine Coast, Mount Rawdon at Mount Perry, west of Bundaberg, and Big T north of Toowoomba.
Meanwhile, the giant Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro Project, west of Mackay, has been scrapped entirely as part of an election promise.
Renewable energy advocates, like Mr Copeman, welcomed the investment but said they did not provide enough clarity on the state's energy transition.
"We still can't say we are going to see the type of investment in the places we need to make sure Queenslanders keep the light on [with renewable energy]," Mr Copeman said.
Mr Copeman said it was not clear whether the hydro-electric projects would help the energy transition as coal-fired power stations reach the end of their lives.
Mr Copeman said taxpayers could pay up to $400 million in additional annual costs to keep the Callide Power Station, west of Gladstone, operating from 2038 to 2041.
"That's a crazy expense. What we'd like to see is more investment in [renewable energy] storage," he said.
Worldwide Fund for Nature Australia's climate and energy spokesperson Ariane Wilkinson said the government should detail when it will move away from coal power.
Ms Wilkinson said it would help the industry transition away from fossil fuels.
"The economic evidence shows it's important to have certainty of a coal closure date," she said.
Ms Wilkinson urged the government to stick to its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 75 per cent of 2005 levels by 2035.
"We consistently need to see regional communities having new opportunities and building new clean industries.
"The world is shifting to renewable energy, and Queensland needs to be in that game and taking advantage of our amazing renewable resources."
The budget details come as the state government is expected to release a five-year energy road map at the end of the year.
Queensland Renewable Energy Council CEO Katie Moulder said the loss of potential power from the Pioneer-Burdekin project was significant and more investment was needed to balance the energy grid.
"We're hoping to work with the government on that," she said.
Treasurer and Minister for Energy David Janetzki said the government's "Energy Roadmap" to 2030 would provide certainty for investors, communities and consumers when it is released later this year.
The government also committed $2.4 billion to the CopperString project by 2028–29.
Meanwhile, the $1,000 for electricity bills rebates introduced as a short-term measure by the Labor government last year will not continue.
Mr Janetzki said a targeted electricity rebate scheme for vulnerable households, including seniors, pensioners and concession card holders, will increase by $14 to $386 with the government restoring annual indexation.
He said underinvestment in power plant maintenance had also resulted in higher power bills, with the budget papers showing $1.6 billion would be invested in Queensland's state-owned generation assets over five years.
That included major overhauls at Callide C, Tarong, and Wivenhoe Power Stations, and a minor overhaul of Callide Unit C4.
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
How easy is it to trick the Australian Taxation Office?
Sam Hawley: How easy is it to trick the Australian Tax Office? Well, for fraudsters it's not hard at all and plenty have done it costing taxpayers billions of dollars that have never been recovered. Today, Angus Grigg on his Four Corners investigation into the biggest GST scam in history and how the ATO dropped the ball. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Angus, you've been hard at work looking into what's going on at the Australian Tax Office. And you've really been having a deep look into this huge GST scam. Now, this unfolded in no other than Mildura in north-west Victoria. So, take me there and tell me about local resident Sarah. Angus Grigg: Yeah. Mildura is a really beautiful town, an irrigation town on the Murray in North West Victoria. And this GST scam really took off in Mildura. And it really was circulating within a sort of population that you might say is low socioeconomic groups, people on welfare, people with addiction issues. And we went to interview one person called Sarah. She was going through quite a bit of financial hardship at the time. I think she'd separated from her partner who was facing pretty serious charges at the time as well. And she was short of money because she needed to have some dental work done. So one of her friends showed her how to use a business that had been registered and an ABN linked to GST to claim GST refunds fraudulently. 'Sarah': The people that I was associating with at that time, they had done it and told me how easy it was to get a large amount of money quickly. And I just thought at the time it was a good idea because I was in a bit of financial trouble. Angus Grigg: She pretended, if you like, to be a hairdresser, despite the fact that she had no hairdressing qualifications. She'd never worked in a hairdresser, hadn't hired premises, had no equipment. And so she logged into her myGov account and first of all, claimed $15,000 and then did it a second time and got another $15,000. 'Sarah': I don't even really still understand how it went through. I was a single parent and then all of a sudden I'm a hairdresser that's getting this return put into my account with no other payments from clients or anything like that to balance it was needed. Like no proof. Angus Grigg: Now, bear in mind, the money went into the same account as her welfare payments and the money went within about 10 days without any verification, without any checks, without anyone from the tax office ringing and saying, what did you spend this money on? Do you have hairdressing qualifications? Have you hired premises? You know, she just absolutely couldn't believe how easy it was. 'Sarah': Yeah, I just couldn't believe it that it was just sitting there on my everyday access debit bank card. Angus Grigg: Now, the other thing to bear in mind, to receive a GST refund of $30,000, she would have needed to have capital expenditure or bought stock and other items for her hairdressing business of about $300,000. Now, surely a single mother living on welfare, getting family tax benefits, that should have been a red flag for the tax office. Sam Hawley: Wow. Okay. So Sarah, which is not her real name, just by the way, you've changed that for this story to keep her anonymous. She just tells the ATO she's a hairdresser and then the tax office falls for it. That's extraordinary. Angus Grigg: It is. And the fact that you don't need a receipt, you don't need any proof of the line of work you're in is extraordinary. And that's because the tax office basically fired most of the humans in the loop and started relying on algorithms or computers, if you like, to make these payments. They wanted to ensure the timely payment of GST refunds to businesses. But in doing that, they really opened the door up to fraud. Sam Hawley: Right. Sure. So the tax office wants to streamline things. But in the meantime, people like Sarah are all of a sudden dabbling in fraud. And as we've mentioned, she's not the only one. There's a lot of other people doing a very similar thing. Tell me about Linden Phillips. What was he up to? Angus Grigg: Linden Phillips, once again from Mildura, for us, he was like patient zero. It looks like he was the really one of the very, very early people in this scam. So what happens is that Linden Phillips gets out of jail in August 2021. And he already has a company registered. And so he reactivates his GST registration through his ABN and his MyGov account. And then within a couple of weeks of getting out of jail, he does what I'd sort of call a test run. And he claims $13,000 in GST refunds from the tax office. Once again, no documents, no receipts, no verification required. He gets that money within a couple of weeks and clearly then thinks, OK, I'm going to go for the big one. And so what he does is he lodges 46 backdated GST claims for an amount of $821,000 in GST. And the real kicker here is that for most of the period those GST claims are lodged, he's actually in jail. Sam Hawley: Oh my gosh. Angus Grigg: I know. He just couldn't make it up. Sam Hawley: What does he do with all that money? Angus Grigg: Well, of course, he spends it, right? Within a couple of weeks, the money's completely gone. He buys himself a second-hand Porsche. Somewhat endearingly, he buys his mother a house. But the really damning thing here is that the tax office notice it. Finally, someone, there's a human in the loop and they pick up the fact that, hey, maybe something's a bit wrong here. And so they ring him up and he says, oh yeah, no, it's all legitimate. I'll get my accountant to call you. The accountant never calls. They send him some emails. They write him some letters. He ignores them all. And the really damning thing here is the tax office does nothing for four months. And in that four month period, this scam absolutely explodes. So what we did is we went back and we deconstructed, if you like, the tax office's narrative. And the narrative was that this fraud took off on social media. The tax office noticed it. They cracked down really hard, really quickly, and they brought it under control. Now we sort about testing that idea. Sam Hawley: So the ATO says it did this great job. It cracked down on this fraud. But what actually happened? Because you actually had a look at that and discovered, in fact, the ATO didn't do much at all. Angus Grigg: No, exactly. So Linden Phillips does finally get caught, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the ATO. It all comes down to the smarts of a local detective in Mildura named Vanessa Power. Now, she is attending Phillips's house on a drugs and gun charge, and she searches his premises, his house, and she confiscates a phone. And using the sort of smarts that the ATO should be employing, she sees that on his phone there appears to be a pretty elaborate GST scam. And in fact, it looks as though that Linden Phillips had helped 60 other people perpetrate this scam. Linden Phillips is arrested. And then a few weeks later, the ATO finally launch what they call Operation Protego, which is to crack down on this GST scam. Sam Hawley: Wow. Okay. And at that point, of course, Sarah, who we spoke about earlier, she was also arrested back in December 2022. But the thing is, the money, it's sort of gone, right? 'Sarah': I can't pay it back. It's not even an option at the moment. Or it probably never will be. Sam Hawley: Is there any way the tax office can actually get these funds back? Angus Grigg: Well, this is the point, right? In the end, $2 billion was stolen from the tax system by 56,000 people. Now, the ATO tell us that of those 56,000 people who perpetrated this scam, just 120, I think it might be 122 now, have been convicted. Secondly, of the $2 billion stolen, the ATO tells us that only 160 million, or around 8% of that, has been recovered. Sam Hawley: And, Angus, that money, it really is just a drop in the ocean, right? Because you've also looked at all the other funds that the ATO hasn't managed to collect, and you've spoken to Karen Payne. Now, she's a former Inspector General of Taxation. She basically says if the ATO had collected what it was owed, then we would all be paying less tax. Angus Grigg: Yeah. Karen Payne, she really focused on what's called collectible debt. And that is this sort of giant number that the ATO doesn't like to talk about. And when she started looking at it, it was about $30 billion. Then it rose to about $50 billion. The figure is now $53 billion. And that is the amount of money or taxes that the ATO has levied, if you like, but not collected. Karen Payne, Inspector General of Taxation, 2019-24: The large percentage of the debts that were due were in fact owned by a very small number of taxpayers or they're related to a small number of taxpayer accounts. So you'd kind of think it's a small number of people you need to be chasing. Angus Grigg: And the point that Karen Payne was making is that if we collected all that tax, perhaps we would not have to pay as much tax, all of us, but also we'd have more money to spend on really basic things like schools, roads and hospitals. Karen Payne, Inspector General of Taxation, 2019-24: The fact that it keeps rising is troubling. So it's fundamental, I think, that we've got good administration of the tax system because the integrity of the tax system is fundamentally important to all of us. It pays for all of the services that we benefit from. Sam Hawley: Angus, despite everything that you have said, which is frankly really concerning, the ATO itself thinks it's doing a pretty good job, right? Because Chris Jordan, who was the tax commissioner up until 2024, he's been putting a rather positive spin on the ATO's work. Angus Grigg: Yeah. This is the really extraordinary thing. Despite all these scandals, the ATO tells us they are doing a great job. Just before Chris Jordan stepped down as tax commissioner, he did a victory lap, if you like, at the National Press Club, and he pointed out all the great, terrific things that the ATO has done. Chris Jordan, Tax Commissioner, 2013-24: We've successfully charted a massive program of transformation. We've cut red tape and we've modernised our administration of the tax system as part of the digital revolution to make tax just happen.
News.com.au
5 hours ago
- News.com.au
Labor to introduce Bill to cap PBS-listed scripts at $25, PM dodges questions on super tax
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News.com.au
6 hours ago
- News.com.au
Australia could be cut off from internet in hours during war, ex-Deputy Secretary of Defence warns
Australia could be digitally isolated within hours of a regional conflict erupting, with 99 per cent of the nation's internet traffic flowing through just 15 undersea cables that enemy submarines could easily sever. The chilling scenario has been outlined by one of Australia's top defence strategists as Exercise Talisman Sabre – involving 40,000 troops from 19 countries – exposes the nation's woeful lack of preparedness for modern warfare. Mike Pezzullo, former Deputy Secretary of Defence, warns that any future conflict wouldn't begin with missiles or bombs, but with cyberattacks designed to cripple Australia's digital infrastructure. 'It would be in cyber. You'd start to see a degradation of the internet,' Pezzullo told 7NEWS. If those critical undersea cables are cut by submarines or crewless vessels, the country would be digitally isolated, cutting off communications, banking, emergency services and the digital backbone that modern Australia relies on to function. 'We are nowhere near ready' The Exercise Talisman Sabre currently underway in Central Queensland has seen US, Australian, French and German forces, among other allies, flexing their military might. But behind the military spectacle lies a more serious warning about Australia's defence capabilities. 'We are nowhere near ready,' Mr Pezzullo said. With tensions escalating in the Indo-Pacific, Mr Pezzullo believes there's at least an 80 per cent chance Australia would be drawn into any conflict between China and Taiwan if the US becomes involved. 'It might start there,' he says. 'But I can assure you, it won't end there.' The strategic reality is stark. Australia's military, ports, bases and intelligence systems are deeply integrated with America's defence network. 'We don't really have a choice,' Pezzullo explains. 'Our military, ports, bases, intelligence systems - they're all deeply tied to America's.' Critical infrastructure exposed Beyond the cyber threat, Australia faces multiple vulnerabilities that could prove catastrophic in any regional conflict. After cutting internet cables, Mr Pezzullo warns targeted missile strikes would likely follow, aimed at key infrastructure including air bases, radar facilities and defence logistics. 'You'd want to ensure those are protected,' Mr Pezzullo said. 'But we have no missile defence systems. We're completely bereft in that area.' Fuel supplies present another critical weakness, with 90 per cent of Australia's oil and petrol flowing through the South China Sea – the very region where any Taiwan conflict would likely unfold. 'We only store enough for 60 days,' Pezzullo warns. Defence assets visible on google maps Adding to Australia's vulnerabilities, billions of dollars' worth of defence aircraft are sitting exposed on tarmacs, visible to anyone with access to Google Maps satellite imagery. Recent drone strikes have demonstrated the devastating potential of low-cost technology. Earlier this year, Ukraine's Operation Spider's Web saw 117 drones destroy approximately $7 billion worth of Russian military assets, including strategic bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons. 'Everything visible from space or aircraft is available on Google Earth, NASA Worldview, or other public systems,' defence strategist Professor David Kilcullen told Australia's fleet of P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance jets at Adelaide's RAAF Base Edinburgh and C-17A transport aircraft at RAAF Base Amberley in Queensland are clearly visible on public satellite imagery, lined up on tarmacs with no protective cover. 'Unfortunately, Google Maps shows almost everything,' Marc Ablong of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute tells 9News. 'You can see the base infrastructure, people on the base, where the guard posts are. You can determine access points, weak points in fence lines.' Playing catch-up While Australia has major defence projects underway, including AUKUS nuclear submarines, new frigates, cruise missiles and underwater drones, Mr Pezzullo says those efforts are still years from completion. 'That technology is improving almost monthly, but we're playing catch-up,' he says. Some argue Australia shouldn't risk its economy by confronting China, the nation's largest trading partner. Mr Pezzullo says that the argument becomes irrelevant in the context of global conflict. 'We'd all suffer through the tanking of the global economy,' he said. He believes Australia's defence budget will need to rise from its current level to three or even three-and-a-half per cent of GDP to adequately deter adversaries and defend the nation. Counter-Drone Defence Underway Defence officials say they're taking the drone threat seriously, with Project Land 156 launched late last year to develop counter-drone systems, complemented by Mission Syracuse focusing on advanced drone intercepting technology. 'The protection of Defence's critical assets is a priority area for work and investment,' a defence spokesperson tells 'Security of bases, ports and barracks is, and will remain, a focus for Defence resources.' Modern counter-drone systems being developed use acoustic, thermal, radar and electro-optic sensors to detect threats, with various methods to neutralise them, including signal disruption and physical destruction. 'Modern counter-drone systems, incorporating radar, radio frequency detection, electronic warfare and directed energy capabilities, are already active across global deployments,' DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornick tells defence industry magazine ADM. Despite the challenges, Mr Pezzullo remains clear about Australia's strategic priorities. 'Plan A is always peace through diplomacy. But if you want peace, prepare for war,' he said.
