In March this year, the Big Gas Man, took a local’s beer, drained the glass and spat the last remnant back into it. The immaculately dressed stranger, with evil intent, was a metaphor for Australia’s gas industry.

Perth agency, Berlin, and The Australia Institute have brough him back in another uncomfortable, the second phase of Big Gas is Taking the Piss, the Effie-finalist campaign that helped put Australia’s gas export giveaway on the national agenda. The behaviour depicted is obscene. So is the film. It is not a comfortable watch, and it isn’t meant to be.

The campaign builds on Australia Institute research into what the gas industry takes out of the country and how little it pays for it:

• More than half the gas exported from Australia attracts zero royalty payments
• Without a 25% gas export tax, an estimated AU$49.8 million a day – roughly $350 million a week, and AU$17 billion a year – in revenue is going uncollected
• Over the same period, that money could have funded free childcare, or free university and TAFE, for every Australian

Richard Berney, managing partner & executive creative director, Berlin, commented, “Obscene profits are made by doing obscene things. And so we told a story that characterises the scale of Big Gas’s greed, and those who are being taken advantage of in the process.”

Where the first phase named the villain, the second focuses on the urgent need for tax reform. Gas is finite and so is the market for it. Whether the world stops buying in fifteen years or thirty, every year Australia doesn’t tax its exports properly is revenue the country will never see again. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

The film closes on a single instruction – tell the Government we want the tax now.

Leanne Minshull, co-chief executive officer, The Australia Institute, stated, “Australians already know they’re being ripped off – more than 100,000 have already added their name to the call for a plebiscite. What matters now is turning that into pressure the Parliament can’t ignore, while there’s still something left to tax.”

The new work, Lick The Plate, was launched at The Australia Institute’s Climate Integrity Summit at the Parliament of New South Wales. The campaign will run across BVOD, social and online video in October directing Australians to gas-plebiscite.australiainstitute.org.au, where they can add their name to the call for a national plebiscite on a 25% gas export tax.

Where the campaign began:

Credits
Client: The Australia Institute
Co-Chief Executive Officers: Leanne Minshull and Richard Denniss
Communications Director: Isaac Nowroozi

Creative Agency: Berlin
Managing Partner & Head of Strategy: John Linton
Managing Partner & Executive Creative Director: Rich Berney
Senior Business Director: Kate Kenyon
Senior Creatives: Scott Pritchett & Will Miles
Agency Producer: Anita Swami

Director: Matt Sav
DOP: Lewis Potts
1st AD: Kiran Wilson
Production Manager: Elsie Shaw
1st AC: Dan Collins
Grip: Clint Lawrence
Gaffer: Dion Borrett

Sound: Ned Beckley @ Envelope Audio