John McVeigh (Groom, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to ask the minister a question surrounding onshore gas reserves and their role in contributing to the national energy mix. As I do that, I acknowledge that we and many stakeholders engage in discussions to secure a national energy future that will provide affordable and reliable supplies whilst meeting our emissions targets, and I reflect on my own electorate of Groom, which I believe provides a very interesting model of a balanced energy future that the nation should consider. My city of Toowoomba is the second largest inland city in Australia behind this city, the national capital. We are an emerging agribusiness centre of Australia. We are based on small business. It is a small-business economy throughout the entire electorate. We are the education and health centre for southern inland Queensland and northern inland New South Wales. We are also a very important energy centre with a truly technology agnostic approach to developments throughout our region.

Just to the north of Oakey, outside Toowoomba, we have the New Acland coalmine, which maintains an international reputation as having one of the lowest greenhouse gas-producing coals in the world. It provides direct jobs for 300 people and 160 contractors, and 2,300 more indirect jobs. It injects about $110 million just into our local economy each year. Within a few short kilometres of that, the 80 megawatt Oakey solar farm is being built. Nearby to that, the 332 megawatt open-cycle, dual liquid/gas-fired Oakey power station is providing yet another energy source. Slightly further afield, we have a range of other power projects, including AGL Energy's proposed $500 million Coopers Gap wind farm, which has a proposed capacity of 350 megawatts. Together with supplies from further afield, I believe these examples present an interesting case study just in my own electorate of a dependence on coal based energy supplies to provide our baseload requirements into the future, with the potential for renewables, fossil fuels, old technology and new technology all working together to ensure a stable, secure and affordable energy supply network into the future.

As is the case throughout the nation for the majority of my constituents—families, businesses, irrigators, farmers and industrial users alike—it is security and cost that matter most. Our local economy has benefited tremendously in recent years through the development of the coal seam gas sector in the Surat Basin to the west. Not without its challenges, as a former minister for agriculture in Queensland I was intimately involved in getting the parameters of coexistence right between agriculture and the gas sector in our region. I believe taking advantage of the natural attributes of a region in a sustainable way makes sense when it comes to energy production. In our region, our local gas and coal reserves do not necessarily play a direct role in meeting our local energy needs. In fact, our gas has largely been destined for export markets to date, but we all exist in the same national energy market. So our region is certainly concerned and vitally interested in the role that gas plays in the national energy market. We are all considering and we are all conscious that, as part of the changes underway in the national market, the Australian gas market is certainly undergoing significant structural change. Therefore, I ask the minister: what is the government doing in response to rising gas prices and to ensure there is adequate gas supply to alleviate pressures on industrial users?

See this speech in context