Australian industrial consumers are also to blame.  For example,...

Australian industrial consumers are also to blame.  For example, Japanese companies paid above market rates for Woodside gas on 20 year contracts, which allowed Woodside to develop NWS.  15 years later and the price of gas was well over the contract price and everyone was crying a river over giving the gas away.  Chinese companies are doing the same thing now with CSG (except they tried to wriggle out of the contracts in the oil price slump...).

I'm sure plenty of smaller Australian explorers on the verge of production would love to be able to enter into deals like the above with Australian companies, but none of the Australian companies wanted to wear the risk because they were all hoping they could just cry to the government and get handouts.

The states changing the rules constantly doesn't help either.  "Oh, you have a bunch of legally acquired tenements.  Well, you can't drill them anymore, but you'll keep paying for them or you'll lose them."  Talk about sovereign risk.