Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. As I am advised, and I am sure that the member would be aware, the gas pockets that are contained on the mainland of Australia actually come under the purview of the state governments for administration. The federal government, through the offshore gas and oil industry, has control of those pockets. We have been spending a considerable amount of money on research, through Geoscience Australia, to identify those pockets. We have been able to roll out leases for people to take up in relation to those. When we look at the investment and development of things such as the Woodside project and the North West Shelf, if we look at the money that is being tipped into the Sunrise project and if we look at research into offshore areas and whether the Bremer Basin contains gas, we will see that these are all things in the future. But I can understand the member’s concern about ensuring domestic supply of gas in Australia.

I am also advised that there is more than ample gas available for domestic supply in Australia, and part of the proof of that is the fact that the government rolled out a massive subsidy in the middle of the fuel crisis to get cars converted to LPG. The take-up of that has been quite phenomenal. Every time the price goes up, the applications to gain access to an LPG vehicle conversion or the $1,000 subsidy for a new vehicle seems to go up. That being said, the delay in that process is, of course, in part due to the delay in accessing installation. Security of supply is critical and we accept that. That is why we take a broad approach to the total amount of availability of gas, oil and, indeed, coal in Australia and how we measure that out.

Also, there are people such as those in AGL who have been involved in looking at establishing the pipeline from PNG oilfields to Australia. People are looking at investing in and developing opportunities there. Of course, for security of supply in my own area in the Hunter, there is a lack of gas availability for domestic and some industrial consumers in the Hunter Valley. Through state governments opening up monopolistic attitudes, there are private investors looking at establishing gas supply lines for domestic consumption. I can assure the member that there will be, in the foreseeable future—no doubt in my lifetime or, indeed, our children’s lifetimes or our grandchildren’s lifetimes, and a few beyond that—no shortage in the supply of gas reserves in Australia.

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