Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

A great question, and a great interjection. I will get to that interjection a little later. This is a very significant contract between one of the partners in the Gorgon project, Exxon Mobil, and the PetroChina oil company. The government, through my colleague the Minister for Resources and Energy, is pleased to have been invited to attend the contract signing in Beijing. I congratulate the Liberal Party in Western Australia and the Premier, Mr Barnett, and the former Premier of WA, Mr Carpenter, for their roles. The contract will see PetroChina buy $50 billion worth of Gorgon LNG over the next 20 years. It will buy $33 billion worth of Australian goods and services. It will create 6,000 jobs at the peak of construction. It will generate $40 billion of government revenue that will go to schools, hospitals and roads. Yet there are still those who question and undermine these particular projects.