Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about gas. This is a complex policy area, but the bottom line is incredibly simple: Australia will blow its carbon emissions budget if gas projects already in the infrastructure pipeline go ahead. We have set this carbon emissions budget, the total emissions that Australia can afford, in our global agreement to curb emissions. It is unconscionable that the possibility of new gas projects is even being entertained by this government, let alone that the infrastructure for those projects be given over $1 billion from the government.

The social licence for taxpayer subsidies for coal, oil and gas has long since expired, particularly at a time of staggering national debt, a grim fiscal outlook and repeated warnings of economic hardship. The Australian public does not want public money to be spent on economically reckless fossil fuel projects and the infrastructure on which those projects rely. This, no doubt, is why Minister Catherine King refuses to admit that the Middle Arm project is unquestionably an expansion of gas production.

We have to remember that the funding for this project was not this government's idea. It was Barnaby Joyce who announced billions of dollars of funding for the Middle Arm precinct as part of what the Morrison government called the five basins gas plan. It's a peculiar name for an allocation of funding that we're now led to believe is not a subsidy for a gas development. Opening a gasfield deep beneath the land in the Katherine and Tennant Creek area known as the Beetaloo basin was the first cab off the rank for Morrison's critically condemned—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will just remind the member to use the member's correct title.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry—the member for Cook's critically condemned and then electorally rejected gas-led recovery. Why is it then that the Labor government has reviewed and removed so many of the member for Windsor's questionable infrastructure commitments but has recommitted more than a billion dollars in funding for expansion of infrastructure that will demand and rely upon gas from the Beetaloo basin?

It has been very difficult to get a straight answer from anyone in the government about what this precinct is for. The government has steadfastly refused to answer simple questions about whether the precinct is intended for gas industry expansion, including petrochemicals manufacturing and gas processing using gas fracked from the basin. However, the CEO of Tamboran Resources, the biggest player in the Beetaloo, has been a bit more direct and a bit more honest. According to him, gas which will be extracted from the Beetaloo basin will be necessary for a full range of industrial purposes at the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct near Darwin. This includes ammonia and urea production for fertiliser, hydrogen production, energy intensive manufacturing, power generation and liquid natural gas for export.

The Australian taxpayers are rightly very worried that the Middle Arm subsidy will be a Trojan horse for significant gas industry expansion in the Northern Territory. We should be doing the opposite. I am calling on the government to rule out gas industry expansion, including petrochemicals manufacturing, at Middle Arm. If we do not do this, we are subsidising new fossil fuel developments in this country.