While government plays down idea of doing deals, Mathias Cormann to meet Centre Alliance on lowering gas prices

The Morrison government is continuing efforts to court the Senate crossbench over its income tax package, with talks with the Centre Alliance in Perth on Monday about measures to relieve high energy prices.

While the Coalition has played down the idea of wheeling and dealing with the crossbench to get the tax package passed, the Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick has gone to Perth for talks with the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, about measures the government could take to lower gas prices.

Centre Alliance wants the Coalition to activate the existing Australian domestic gas security mechanism, which has not been used, that prevents companies exporting gas without first obtaining permission from the government.

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Patrick told Guardian Australia on Monday that gas consumers were paying 20% more than customers in Asia, and the Asian market was already characterised by high gas prices. “The system as it stands is broken,” he said.

The senator said Monday’s talks were connected to the passage of the tax package once parliament resumes in July, but it was his view the Morrison government needed to produce a fix on gas prices regardless of whether a deal was struck with the crossbench on this legislation.

The government will need the Centre Alliance Senate bloc for legislative votes where Labor and the Greens oppose its policy.

The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, who has already signalled her Senate team is “not sold” on the income tax package, said on Monday infrastructure remained her priority, rather than tax relief.

She said she had not yet had a conversation with Cormann about the package but her office had met Treasury officials last Friday.

“Now, the feedback that I have got is that they can do it one of two ways,” Hanson told the Nine Network. “We can either go with the tax cuts or we can go with infrastructure projects, which will do exactly the same.

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“But at the end of the day, we are going to end up with infrastructure that will deliver us cheaper electricity, security, and also the water security that we need as well for the country,” she said.

Hanson said the government needed to focus on the regions. “How many more farmers are we going to see destitute because they don’t have the water? This is what I am saying, make the right decisions now for the future generations.

“I think governments are being too gutless to go into these huge big projects because they’re looking after their mates – the multinationals, the big end of town that are making a lot of money out of the sacrifices of people themselves.”

The government is continuing to insist it has a mandate to pass the whole package, but Labor is still on the fence about what it will support.

The Coalition’s income tax package is divided into three parts: the first stage provides a tax offset to benefit low- and middle-income earners from 2019 to 2022; the second stage raises the 19% tax bracket threshold from $41,000 to $45,000 from 2022; and the third stage flattens tax brackets from 2024 so everyone earning between $45,000 to $200,000 would pay a marginal rate of 30%.

While Labor has agreed to the first stage and is open to the second, so far it has balked at stage three, demanding to know how much of the tax cuts will flow to high-income earners in a bid to pressure the government to split the bill.

The shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has written to the government seeking to quantify the total cost of the package and how much will flow to high income earners – people earning $180,000 or more.

On Monday the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, brushed off questions from reporters about Labor’s position on the package, saying the opposition first needed information from the government. “We’re after some facts,” he said.