Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

We recognise that export controls are not a sustainable long-term solution to the situation we face. Last year we had to take significant action to relieve our situation. The long-term solution to this issue is to bring on more supplies of gas to alleviate the supply situation that we have. That is why we put aside $90 million in last year's budget to facilitate the supply of gas in Australia. Included in that was $26 million to support gas production projects directly. In Senator Fawcett's home state, $6 million will be provided to Beach Energy in Adelaide to construct a new gas processing facility in the Otway Basin to bring more gas online. In fact, this program will deliver an extra 25 petajoules of gas right across Australia by 2020. We've also accelerated gas market reforms to bring down the cost of pipelines and gas transportation around the country, and we are funding bioregional assessments to open up new fields and new areas across the country to bring new gas supplies online to, hopefully, help take pressure off prices further.