David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very important motion, and I'd like to thank the member for proposing it. Natural gas, or methane, is an essential part of the Australian economy. Most of the Western and Eastern world, across the northern and southern hemispheres, relies on gas. Gas in Australia is plentiful. We have coal-seam related gas. Many other places have their gas possibly associated with distillate, or oil. Countries like Canada have it in their oil sands, others with a lot of shale gas. It's critical that we get more gas out of our territory, because we are running out.

I would just like to open with observations in the Guardian, which doesn't usually speak favourably about gas. The headline: 'Gas shortfalls for eastern states worse than predicted just months ago, ACCC warns'. I quote:

East coast gas shortfalls could emerge as soon as 2027 … and in some states in 2026—unless new sources of supply are made available, the competition watchdog has warned …

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and AEMO have issued threat notices several times because of the very thin reserves of available gas for the eastern and southern states. They have had to extend the life of Eraring—thank goodness. That reliable source of energy is working 90 per cent of the time.

Across Australia, 80,000 people are working in the gas industry. It provides 32 per cent of all industrial processes. In fact, on the manufacturing side, 44 per cent of our processes rely on gas. Twenty per cent of our gas is used for household, or residential, use. It's also a key feedstock for fertilisers, chemicals and electricity generation. Open-cycle gas turbines that you can turn on, the electricity generators of which you can spin courtesy of a gas-fired turbine, can be made available in minutes if gas is at the power station. But the electricity is expensive if the gas is expensive. The energy density is not nearly as high as other forms, like nuclear. If we have low gas levels or expensive gas, we've got expensive electricity, uneconomic manufacturing and expensive fertiliser. It's critical for our food supply. The royalties from the gas industry in Australia give us $17 billion every year, let alone all the investment activity, with up to $300 billion invested in the gas industry in Australia. Many thousands of associated jobs rely on it.

The other thing is that our neighbours, our allies, Japan and Korea—nations in Asia that don't have any natural resources like gas or coal—depend on it. In fact, there is a huge requirement for these countries to use our empty gas fields for their carbon capture and storage. There are many fields that will be able to provide that. East Timor will get a lot of revenue from the empty gas fields that are on their territory. We've got four fields in Western Australia that can take gas, and we have three in the eastern states. It is also the feedstock for 99 per cent of the world's hydrogen. CH4 is where hydrogen comes from. It's made by splitting the hydrogen off methane.

Even though this government has a gas strategy and talks big, the other side of government is that the environmental approvals have all been frozen, and you can't get gas out of the ground at a minute's notice or in the short term. There is a long lag period. So we don't want rhetoric; we want faster approvals and for people to appreciate that gas is an essential. America have reduced their footprint by 40 per cent by replacing their coal with gas. We could do that now. It is feasible. We've just got to approve everything and get cracking.

See this speech in context