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

To develop these types of industries, we need strong political support. As I mentioned, it was good to join the Victorian minister Tim Pallas in Victoria, and I recognise their support for the project. There are those that oppose this project, though, and say we shouldn't use our brown coal resources—they're terrible and evil and all these sorts of things. This project will generate around 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide. I was advised last week that that would be about 15 to 20 trips from Melbourne to London on a business class flight. So this particular project is one climate change conference, perhaps much less than that.

It's a very important innovation—that we do this and support these projects. I also call on the Victorian government to support the development of their gas resources, not just their hydrogen resources. Hydrogen has enormous potential for decades to come, but we need Victorian gas to develop sooner rather than later to make sure we protect the thousands of manufacturing jobs that exist in Victoria today and, hopefully, will exist in the future—providing we have common sense from the Victorian government soon.