David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

We are all focusing on keeping our industrial systems going, particularly manufacturing. Everyone realises Australia's vulnerability without our own manufacturing sovereign capability. It is obvious to everyone involved in the energy system. The member for Hunter actually spoke common sense—coming from a member of the ALP; Hallelujah! What has happened to the rest of them? They have gone missing in action. They have swallowed this nonsense that we can replace our fossil fuels at the drop of a hat and rely on temporary wind blowing, the day-night cycle, monsoon periods and wet and cloudy weeks—like the month or six weeks where we had 600 mills of rainfall on the North Coast of New South Wales—to replace the form of energy that is available around the clock. The last time society relied on the weather or the flow of water through creeks and mills was in the 1700s and 1800s.

How the modern industrial world happens is because manufacturing is powered by oodles and oodles energy, and that has come out of the use of fossil fuels. We know that this is having an effect on the atmosphere that we all breathe and the climate. So we have to do it in the most efficient way. Gas is part of that efficiency, because it has a lower footprint than burning coal. But so does other forms of technology, like modern coal-fired power stations. Many are in the seat of the member for Hunter, and he understands the practicality and the reality of keeping Australian manufacturing going, let alone losing it because our prices for our energy are too high.

We have bucket loads of gas in our country, in our offshore areas, and we have developments happening. People have to realise that it's not a bad thing. It delivers fertilisers for our farmers. For all the plastics and lots of other things that are manufactured, gas features as one of the ingredients or the feed stock for it. So we need it and we need it cheap and plentiful; otherwise, we won't make stuff in this country. It is US$2.52 for a unit of gas in America. It has come down considerably in Australia but it's still around $7, $8 or $9. So you can't run a baseload system on gas. You can use it in a gas-peaking plant, where you get paid an absolute motza because the market gets shorted by people who have a variety of assets and they get a lot for their electricity. But, for that portion of the electricity that never varies, that doesn't drop below a certain amount, you need a baseload system.

Gas is really part of the recovery and is essential for our industry and for everyday things in life. We cook with it. We heat with it. Countries freeze. Look at what happened to Texas. They had a big freeze and they lost 50 per cent of their natural gas because it all froze in the pipelines. The place froze and electricity was like it is in Australia regularly—it went to over $5,000 for short periods of time. But the important thing is gas is not bad. Gas is essential. We can get it out of the subterranean places on this earth quite safely. There is a flush of salty water when it first happens in natural gas fields or in coal-seam gas, but all the water doesn't run to the bottom of the earth and we don't die in gas plumes. It's well managed in Australia.

We need to support the project that the member for Hunter was talking about, the Narrabri gas fields. New South Wales needs to have gas nearby where manufacturing can happen. You need a pipeline to get it there. So the Hunter gas line will be important to keep the engine room of New South Wales and Australia, the Hunter manufacturing precinct, alive and well and producing stuff for this nation. So I commend the member for Grey's motion about the importance of gas, but we have to make sure that we secure it for us here in Australia rather than exporting it all.

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