Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

The 2017-18 budget was the first since the departments of environment and energy were formally combined. Of course, it is a major responsibility to secure Australia's energy future and to do so in a way which protects, promotes and enhances our environment and a series of other additional measures to protect some of our major landmarks.

In terms of energy, within the budget there was a $265 million package of measures. That included work around the gas industry and boosting gas supply, a $30.4 million commitment for new combined geological and bioregional assessments. This will help assess the potential impacts on waterways and aquifers in three onshore areas that are underexplored but prospective for unconventional gas. As we have seen recently, a number of state governments—Labor governments—have put restrictions on the development of unconventional and indeed onshore conventional gas—

An honourable member: Unconventional gas in Victoria.

that is right—much to the disadvantage of consumers in their own states. We would like to enhance the scientific work that is done to ensure that that is more likely to occur. There was $5.2 million to assess the impacts, the costs and the benefits of constructing pipelines to link northern and Western Australian gas reserves to the east coast through Moomba in South Australia. Pipeline activity is critical and there is no shortage of gas in Western Australia. And were the Northern Territory to lift its moratorium on unconventional gas extraction you would have 180 years worth of reserves that could make their way south.

We also provided money for the Energy Use Data Model. As you know, the energy market is changing dramatically and consumers are at the heart of this transition, and 2.7 million households now have solar panels and hot-water systems. So we are providing $13.4 million in the budget to enable CSIRO to enhance its Energy Use Data Model. We made it very clear through the Treasurer's speech that we stand committed to Snowy Hydro 2.0 and, indeed, open to acquiring a larger share or outright ownership of Snowy Hydro.

When it comes to the environment, I follow a long list of coalition ministers and Prime Ministers who have made significant achievements in enhancing our environmental protection. Malcolm Fraser protected Uluru and Fraser Island. John Howard established the EPBC Act. Tony Abbott banned the dredge disposal projects he inherited from the previous Labor government in the Great Barrier Reef national park. And Malcolm Turnbull is continuing with an announcement, in the budget, of this vein, of an additional $1.1 billion over seven years for Landcare. This is a very significant imitative given that there are 5,400 different Landcare groups around the country and 100,000 active volunteers in those groups.

We also saw $49.8 million committed to Macquarie Island over the 11 years from 2016-17. This is to upgrade the research station on Macquarie Island, which is a very important environmental climate change weather station for the collection of key data. This helps the Bureau of Meteorology, Geoscience Australia and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.

When it comes to the environment and when it comes to energy, there are many challenging issues. On any one day I will be dealing with issues related to sharks off the coast of Western Australia or the Barrier Reef or how we support boosting Indigenous rangers' activities across the country, or energy policy—making up for the mistakes of the Labor Party when it came to doubling of prices that we saw on electricity during their time in office. It is not something we would like to emulate. Indeed, we are doing everything we can to drive down power prices.

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