Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a few questions and I'm very pleased to see that we have a cabinet minister actually in the room this time around. It makes a nice change, as the member for Gippsland has pointed out.

In the recent budgets, the Labor party has committed almost $10 million to the Environmental Defenders Office. This is an organisation who continually takes on projects to delay, to distort, to stop and to frustrate projects which are in the resources sector in particular.

My first question to the minister is: can the minister guarantee that taxpayer funding in the federal Labor budget for the Environmental Defenders Office will not be used to conduct lawfare in the courts against gas and other resource projects—projects that deliver for our economy, projects that deliver jobs, projects that are critical to this nation's success, projects that Australians rely on to pay their bills. We have in the budget a federal Labor government that is funding an organisation whose sole purpose appears to be shutting down and delaying projects that matter.

We hear about cuts and we hear from the minister about how we can't have it both ways. The minister also can't have it both ways. The budget has an additional spend of $185 billion. You can't claim that you have reduced spending when you have increased it by $185 billion. What was cut out of the budget that matters are funding around development for the Beetaloo basin, funding for strategic gas plans and funding across the board to ensure that these projects come on earlier than we thought they would otherwise happen, because the projects are needed. They add to our GDP and they secure our nation. They make it more nationally secure, and that is important.

My second question to the minister is: how does the minister expect additional gas supplies to be developed when the Labor government has cut funding for strategic gas basin plans and the Beetaloo basin development and continues to support Victoria's prohibition of gas development in that state? You cannot have more gas if you don't develop any gas. You cannot rely on gas, for all of the things that they claim to rely on it for, if you don't actually develop any.

A CSIRO report in 2022 identified that carbon capture and storage in depleted gas basins could store literal gigatonnes of CO2. Why do the minister and this government continue to support the ridiculous position of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy but not utilise this type of technology for what those opposite claim is important?

In fact, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy went to the MAN Energy Solutions factory in Germany, with great hoo-ha and lots of pic ops. Guess what they do. They build multistage, super-high-pressure pumps for carbon capture and storage to do this type of work, and they have sold hundreds of them around the world. Whilst you'll celebrate in Germany, you won't utilise the technology in Australia.

We have seen from this government the most remarkable intervention in the resources sector in our country's history for projects that have been put in place for years under a set of rules and policies that they made decisions on for tens of billions of dollars. Now we see proposals where two ministers in particular can make a decision on a business-by-business basis as to whether those rules will apply to them. It is incredible. We have seen the ambassador of Japan say that there is now sovereign risk in this nation. This has never happened before. Can the minister name any other jurisdiction, apart from China, Russia and North Korea, where two ministers can arbitrarily determine whether a mandatory code, an intervention or a price cap can be retrospectively applied and applied on a business-by-business basis?

We continue to hear about the Beetaloo basin. The Northern Territory has made some announcements about that recently. What we have seen in the budget is a cut to the fund that helps develop that basin earlier than it might have otherwise been because it is important for jobs in the Northern Territory. It's important for driving the economy. It's important for the east coast gas market—if you can hook it up. So I say to the minister: what is the earliest possible date that Beetaloo basin gas is expected to be available on the east coast gas market, in particular given that they've cut the plans for developing the gas infrastructure program in Australia? If you don't have any pipelines of sufficient capacity, you can't transfer gas, so how is it that the minister expects to meet the target of increased gas by cutting gas and how he expects that it'll drive down the price of gas by having less supply and they'll have more development by intervening in markets where people have made decisions for tens of billions of dollars and now consider Australia to be a location of sovereign risk?

Finally, in the last seconds I have, has the minister been advised of any previously announced projects that have taken an FID, a final investment decision, which will now be delayed or cancelled because of the Labor's government policies and the decisions that they've made in their budget?

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