Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on recent announcements in the resources industry and the benefits for Australia?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member, who proudly represents a constituency in the great state of Western Australia in the Commonwealth parliament. Last night in Beijing, ExxonMobil and PetroChina signed Australia’s largest ever export deal—a $50 billion contract to supply liquefied natural gas to China. This agreement will provide the basis for the creation of thousands of jobs and will also inject billions of dollars into our economy. This announcement helps bring the Gorgon project to the verge of reality, although as I have mentioned a number of times in this place, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts still has some processes to conclude—as he should.

Gorgon would be the largest resources project ever undertaken in Australia. It would create an estimated 6,000 jobs during its peak construction and an estimated 3,500 jobs during the operational life of the project. It would boost WA gross state product by four per cent and provide tens of billions of dollars in revenue for all Australians. I congratulate ExxonMobil and the Gorgon partners, Chevron and Shell, on the progress Gorgon has made to date, and I look forward to seeing the project being brought to a conclusion subject to the completion of environmental processes.

The global economic crisis notwithstanding, we are on the threshold of an unprecedented expansion of the LNG industry in Australia. As I told the House yesterday, Chevron is moving toward the further development of its Wheatstone gas project to the south of Pluto. The Japanese company INPEX, in partnership with Total, is progressing with the Ichtys project in Darwin. Woodside’s Pluto 1 project is scheduled for completion and will produce its first gas by the end of next year, with exports to Japan commencing in early 2011. I am pleased to advise the House that the CEO of Woodside, Don Voelte, has just announced that Woodside will proceed with front-end engineering design work for stages 2 and 3 of the Pluto project. An expansion of this magnitude would involve an investment of around $20 billion and would generate around 3,500 jobs.

Elsewhere in LNG development, we also have major projects centred in and around Gladstone, so ably represented in this parliament by the member for Flynn. We are proceeding with projects in that part of Australia as well—projects including the Australia Pacific LNG, which is a joint venture between Origin and ConocoPhillips; the Gladstone LNG, which is a joint venture between Santos and Petronas of Malaysia; Curtis Island LNG, which is operated by the BG Group with an interest from CNOOC of China, and is aiming to have first LNG in 2013; and LNG International is establishing a smaller project at Fisherman’s Landing, aiming to have the first LNG in 2011-12. So not just in Western Australia but also in Queensland, this government is providing every level of possible support it can to bring about these future great economic development opportunities for Australia.

Despite the global financial crisis, it is good to see these investments representing confidence in the Australian economy for the long-term future. Of course, each of these projects involves investment in significant private sector infrastructure. In recent times, of course, the public sector has had to step up to the plate because of the withdrawal of private sector investment activity, and we have seen already from the data produced the extent to which our investment strategy in public infrastructure will roll out in the one, two and three years ahead.

The nation at large is working together in dealing with the great crisis and challenge represented by the global economic recession, because nearly all people in this country recognise that we are all in this together. Governments Liberal and Labor—Labor government in Canberra, Liberal government in Western Australia—as well as business, unions and the entire community are behind the government and behind the nation, trying to make a difference in reducing the impact on Australian jobs, small business and the economy brought about by the global economic recession.

We also as a government face the long-term challenge of how we partner with the private sector in planning best for our long-term infrastructure needs and our long-term skills needs. The great lesson which came out of previous mining booms was as follows: great pressure being placed on our infrastructure and great pressure being placed on our skills. In the government’s first year in office, part of the reason for establishing bodies like Infrastructure Australia and Skills Australia was that it put us in a better position to plan for the rollout of infrastructure long term and for the skills formation we need long term as well. If you aggregated all these projects and the skills demand they have for the Australian economy long term, we must do a better job as a nation in bringing all those skills on stream.

The country at large is celebrating this project today but also the confidence we see writ large across the LNG sector, but can I say that unfortunately again we have negative comments from various of those opposite today. In fact, we had Senator Joyce going out there and, I believe, talking about Chinese ownership in the resources sector. He says:

I’ve got big problems about their ownership of resources in the ground in Australia and the resources not only in the ground in Australia but also in the territory that is controlled by Australia.

That is Senator Joyce today, a day when we have a $50 billion contract signed with China. We had that comment, presumably representing opposition policy on their hostility towards Chinese participation in resource development in Australia in the future. On top of that, when we have this good development for the Australian economy we have the shadow Treasurer going out there and saying it is time for the government to roll back its investment in the nation’s infrastructure. The reason why we have confidence in the future on the part of so many Australian companies is that government is stepping up to the plate to do its part in partnership with the private sector, because we earnestly believe that we are in this all together—private sector, public sector and governments at both levels making a long-term difference for the Australian economy. I say to those opposite: stop talking the economy down and help us build the Australian economy up.