Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On budget night the Treasurer laid the foundations for Australia's road to recovery, and that road to recovery is absolutely going to be gas fired. Gas supports our manufacturing sector. It also employs via the manufacturing sector some 900,000 Australians. It's an essential input in the production of plastics for PPE, for fertilisers, for food production and for many other items. Australia is one of the world's largest exporters of LNG, with our exports predicted to reach 81 million tonnes in 2021-22. Gas will also help Australia to continue meet and beat our emissions reduction targets.

Australia's domestic energy market is experiencing record supply from renewable sources like wind and solar. One-in-four Australian households now have rooftop solar, which makes sense given our sunny climate. But we need to balance this uptake of renewable energy with a reliable and flexible source of energy, and that's the role of gas. Far from competing with renewables, gas complements them. To simplify it, when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing, gas keeps the lights on.

Recognising the importance of gas to our energy mix and our economy, the Morrison government is committed to taking actions that will increase supply whilst simultaneously driving down prices for Australian households and businesses. Indeed, in this budget, we've allocated $58.6 million to measures which will unlock supply, will deliver an efficient pipeline and transportation market and will empower gas customers.

Energy companies themselves are contributing to our national transition to a low-carbon future. For example, Woodside, my former employee before coming to this place, has set new and interim long-term targets for their Pluto LNG plant. This includes an interim target to abate 30 per cent of emissions by 2030 and a long-term target to abate 100 per cent of emissions by 2050. Woodside are also proposing to develop the very important Scarborough gas resource through new offshore facilities connected by a pipeline some 430 kilometres long to a proposed expansion of the existing Pluto LNG onshore facility. The final investment for Scarborough and Pluto Train 2 is due in the second half of 2021.

The Morrison government is also backing six new carbon capture and storage projects, and one of these is from oil and gas company Santos. They will have a share in that $50 million carbon capture use and storage development fund, which will see them allocated $15 million to capture and store carbon dioxide emitted from their Moomba LNG operations. Our sustained economic recovery, which in turn underwrites our prosperity and security, will continue to rely upon natural gas.

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