Unfortunately, we've seen this movie before: Labor bringing on an ill-considered, ill-consulted-on and ill-designed gas reservation bill, only to see a litany of problems sink it before their very eyes. That's what we're looking at here, with this package of three bills which are nothing less than an assault on Western Australia's gas industry and, indeed, on the prosperity of Western Australians, because this legislation seeks to import east coast problems over the border into my own home state of Western Australia.

For Labor MPs from Western Australia, this represents a test: will they put their home state and the interests of the Western Australian people who trusted them to come to Canberra to represent them and to be a voice in this place, ahead of the eastern states? That is the test that we see this legislation present, because, as it stands today, these three bills—the Domestic Gas Reservation Bill 2026, the Domestic Gas Reservation (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2026 and the Domestic Gas Reservation Levy Bill 2026—represent a $330 billion threat to the opportunity for Western Australia's gas industry, because we have, and have long had, for more than two decades now, a gas reservation system that works. But, rather than take something that works and replicate it on a national scale, rewarding those states who have managed their hydrocarbons industries well, we see this legislation in front of us. The holes in it are so numerous that it warrants serious scrutiny by the parliament. The fact that we see debate gagged in this place and this legislation rammed through the House whilst there are such fundamental issues with it is obscene, frankly. And that's why we are, effectively, standing for Western Australia and demanding amendments to this legislation—not for it to be patched up later, as the Labor government like to do, with a bandaid here or there, as with the fourth bill to fix up the ART which was rushed through the parliament as well. This legislation should not pass this place until it is fit for purpose.

Effectively, at the moment, the most important issue with this bill is that Western Australia's fate is to be decided by ministerial discretion, and the minister that we're talking about is none other than the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen—part-time president of the COP flop, now sunning himself in Fiji to get over the jet lag, because his own convention, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Australian taxpayer, wasn't enough excitement to keep him awake—and that idea is frightening for our gas industry and, indeed, Western Australia's industries that depend on cheap, reliable and affordable gas. That's why we want to see amendments to this legislation. Where a state scheme is already in operation and substantially achieves the bill's objectives—because, let's face it, Western Australia's domestic gas reservation scheme has been doing so for more than 20 years—we argue that the minister must set the domestic supply obligation for the market to zero.

There must be an automatic mechanism in the legislation so that where a state is proactively reserving gas for its domestic needs in a functioning market, the Commonwealth scheme doesn't fiddle with it. What we see here is the imposition from the eastern states squarely over the top of a scheme that has worked for 20 years with an untested, untried and, frankly, horrible set of legislation that asks more questions than it answers. For instance, this reservation scheme would apply in the Northern Territory. Now, anyone who's considered the transportation of gas from the Northern Territory to the eastern seaboard, and particularly to southern states like Victoria, would understand just how frighteningly expensive that can be. But, nonetheless, the obligation stands under this legislation that 20 per cent of gas produced offshore the NT would be required to be transported to the eastern states market, and it must be sold even if the market price is effectively insufficient to recover the cost of production. What sort of madness is this? You would think that there would be pause on the government benches to ask those simple questions and have them resolved before they tabled such legislation, which is frankly an absolute embarrassment. Nonetheless, the energy minister should have no discretionary role in the fate of Western Australia's gas reservation scheme.

Where exemptions are applied under the legislation, they should run indefinitely or at least the life of project, which, in the case of the gas industry, is typically 40 years. We are seeing investment capital flee from Australia's shores. At the same time as our productivity has flatlined, absolutely going nowhere, our standards of living are going backwards. The very investment that we need to attract to get our economy moving again is fleeing elsewhere. Perth-headquartered companies are amongst the first to be sending their investment capital overseas. If you look at, as a prime example, Western Australia's—and indeed Australia's—largest LNG producer, Woodside Energy, they've spent more money investing in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Senegal in Africa than in Australia in recent years. That's frightening.

We've got to ask ourselves why Australian companies are fleeing offshore with capital to invest in other jurisdictions. Frankly, it's because of the fact that the Labor government has made the gas industry in Australia almost uninvestable in recent years. The reason why market participants have that view should be pretty obvious. These interventions from the Labor government have included gas price caps; a complex and poorly developed mandatory code of conduct, which did absolutely nothing except drive prices up on the eastern seaboard; the rushed announcement of a gas reservation scheme in December 2025 without any real detail behind it except that it was alleged to commence immediately; and then we've had the past eight months of design and consultation on this dog's breakfast of a legislative package, which has left the industry confused, paralysed and frozen. Indeed, those investment dollars are fleeing our shores whilst customers are looking elsewhere in the world for supply guarantees. This is playing into the hands of other jurisdictions like Canada and the US. Outside of the conflict in the Middle East, of course, Qatar is also the beneficiary of underwriting gas projects with significant life-of-project and billions of dollars of prosperity for those host countries.

So the facts speak for themselves in that energy prices are up 40 per cent since the Albanese government came to power. We face looming winter shortfalls, exacerbating the risk of blackouts. At the end of the day, this scheme does nothing to boost supply. In fact, it scares investment dollars away from Australia whilst posing difficult problems for existing operators that can't simply be answered. The pipelines that exist between Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria are at capacity or very, very close to it, so how is this reservation scheme supposed to answer the transmission problem of gas molecules from states that have done the right thing and have backed investment capital that wanted to take the risk, wanted to develop these projects and has successfully done so in Australia in the last 40 or 50 years, since Western Australia's pioneering North West Shelf development and, of course, the boom that we saw through the mid-2010s with Gorgon and Wheatstone and with Gladstone in Queensland?

The states that have done the right thing are enjoying the results of low, reliable and sustainable gas prices. The states that have not done the right thing are the ones bleating for change today. But Victoria has a moratorium on gas exploration in its own state, whilst New South Wales is making moves towards the same madness. The questions of how these peculiar decisions of state jurisdictions will play out with this Commonwealth intervention need to be answered before we pass the legislation, not afterwards, because, at the end of the day, the uncertainty that's already crippling the industry will be more pronounced if we see an even bigger legislative mess as a result of the passage of this.

The coalition has always said that we want Australian gas to work for Australians and our export partners. Whilst we were in government, of course, we never saw the Japanese ambassador take to publicly commenting on the fact that they saw Australia as a risky destination for investment and an increasingly untrustworthy partner for energy security. Anyone who understands Japanese culture and the Japanese psyche knows just how startling a pronouncement that was from a Japanese ambassador.

But, at the end of the day, this package of bills has done nothing to advance the ability to invest in Australia for the development of gas. In fact, it does the opposite. In Western Australia, our Perth Basin has in recent years seen an investment boom, and it is that onshore domestic gas production, where 100 per cent of those molecules are going directly into the industries that underpin jobs and prosperity in my home state, that is exactly the sort of thing that keeps gas prices low. What you are going to see under a domestic gas reservation policy like the one this package of bills represents is a starvation of investment in the exploration and development of onshore gas, which is critical to keeping industry going.

The Albanese government likes to talk about a future made in Australia and is very quick to shell out taxpayer dollars to prop up unprofitable and unviable businesses suffering at the hands of high energy costs. Look at the recent announcement of $2½ billion for Tomago. Don't get me started, Deputy Speaker Mascarenhas, on the fact that high energy prices sank the Albemarle lithium refinery in my own seat, with the loss of some 800 jobs. The Albanese government was nowhere to be seen. That's a whole other issue.

I turn back to this legislation. It does nothing to improve the ability to invest in domestic gas production and in onshore gas exploration, which, of course, in five or 10 years time leads to that domestic gas production. We are setting ourselves up for an epic fail, and some would contend that there's a risk here that the Albanese government will rush off and do what they always do: do a deal with the Australian Greens. At the end of the day, we want to see reliable and affordable gas for Australians, with gas production and policies that encourage investment. If there is a legislative package that can be salvaged out of this through significant amendment and with protections for states like Western Australia, then, of course, we will vote in the national interest. But we will stand in the way of bad legislation that does not deliver more gas for the Australian people now and into the future. That is our responsibility to the Australian people.

So the test of whether his government will put aside politics, act in the national interest and work with the coalition to amend this dog's breakfast of bills into some sort of package that can actually work for the Australian people really lies now with the Prime Minister. We've never hidden our desire to see more Australian gas working harder for Australians, but this legislation as it stands will not deliver that reality. If the government decides to do a dirty deal with the Greens, well, so be it, and let there be no mistaking that that may well have been the intention all along, because with this government you don't look at what it says, you look at what it does. As I say, Western Australian Labor MPs are quick to say that they stand up for Western Australia. Well, the test is coming. The test is coming in this place this very week, and either they will vote to protect Western Australia's gas reservation scheme and Western Australian jobs by not allowing the passage of the bills in the current form or they will sell out their home state, Western Australians and our successful Western Australian gas reservation scheme, which, I might add, was introduced by a Labor government. I do give credit where credit is due, and it was the Western Australian Labor government, in 2005, that set our state on this journey to prosperity. That's something worth remembering, because bipartisanship in the national interest is possible with this package of bills. There is a way, with substantial amendment, of working with the coalition and with industry to get something that might actually deliver more Australian gas for Australians. But, as it stands, this is a journey to blackouts, higher prices, less investment in Australia, less prosperity and fewer jobs in an industry that delivers extremely high standards of living and wages to the workers who benefit from it.