The Australia Institute congratulates the NSW Government on increasing coal royalties, potentially raising an extra $2.7 billion over four years.
"This is a good move by the NSW Government that will benefit the NSW economy and community," said Rod Campbell, research director at the Australia Institute.
"Collecting more royalties from the fossil fuel industry allows state governments to simultaneously meet their commitments to spend more on essential services and improve their budget bottom line.
"In recent years coal companies have made record profits selling NSW coal to the world, while the climate damage caused by coal is ever more apparent.
"The modest returns paid to the NSW public for the sale of the state's coal are clearly not sufficient to compensate for the use of the resource, address mine site rehabilitation liabilities and the increasing costs of climate change.
"The 2.6% increase in royalties announced today should be a first step towards shifting the costs of climate change away from the community and onto the fossil fuel companies that are causing the problem.
"The Australia Institute has long recommended a climate disaster levy of $1 per tonne of embodied carbon on all fossil fuel exports from Australia.
"Australian Governments are finally seeing that they can raise more money from the mining and fossil fuel industries with minimal political or economic cost.
"The NSW change comes as the Federal Government is proposing improvements to Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, after Queensland increased coal royalties last year and after Victoria made increases in 2016 and 2019.
"Raising more revenue from fossil fuel production is economic good sense. These are non-renewable resource that governments should be trying to phase out and generating as large a return as possible for the public in the meantime."
