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

I thank Senator Williams for that excellent question. This government stands shoulder to shoulder with our manufacturing industry in wanting to develop our resources sector to make sure we can continue to support high-paying jobs not just in our resources sector but also in the manufacturing sector, because so many of our jobs rely on having adequate supplies of energy—in particular, gas—to support those high paying jobs in manufacturing. To that end, it was great privilege to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Northern Territory government in the last month to help develop the Beetaloo Basin, one of the most exciting prospective gas basins in this country. To explain how important this is, this would be Australia's first major shale gas basin to be developed. You can see what shale oil and gas are doing for the United States and their manufacturing sector. It would be good to have some of that here as well in this country.

At the moment, the Beetaloo Basin is estimated to have more than 200 years supply of gas in it for this country. It's a huge amount of resource for us. It'll also possibly open up more export markets as well, and, most importantly, the Beetaloo Basin is possibly liquids-rich. There are certainly some liquids there. I'm looking at Senator Molan. I know he knows there is a significant problem in this country with adequate supplies of liquid fuels to support our national security interests as well as our broader economic interests as well. We should seek to develop these resources to support industry in Australia, to support jobs and to make sure that we can secure supplies of important energy, like oil, to Australians. We are working with the Northern Territory government, with the CSIRO and with our departmental officials to develop this in unison to make sure that we can provide benefits to the Northern Territory as well as to the broader Australian people.