Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

The Liquid Fuel Emergency Amendment Bill 2017 forms part of the government's plan to comply with International Energy Agency fuel emergency reserve requirements. This is a requirement to have available 90 days worth of emergency fuels. The bill allows the government to increase the reserve of fuel by entering into financial contracts that enable fuel reserves to be held financially, avoiding physical and logistical costs of transport and storage. As a result of declining domestic production of and increased demand for liquid fuels, these stores are no longer sufficient to meet the 90-day requirement, and Australia has been non-compliant with the 90-day stockholding obligation since March 2012.

Labor support this bill, but we do not support the government's broader approach to gas and energy policy, and this is part of the broader approach. Australia is in the middle of a gas price and supply crisis. If we don't see real national leadership to resolve this crisis we'll see devastating impacts on industry, business closures, and the loss of thousands of jobs, as well as more electricity price rises. Labor has been warning about the gas price and supply crunch—we've been calling it a supply crunch for years. That's why at our last national conference, in 2015, we adopted a gas export national interest test to ensure that Australian supplies wouldn't be hurt by the LNG export industry. But in recent months our conversations with industry and experts have made it clear that this is no longer a crisis that is coming sometime down the track, sometime in the future; it's a crisis that is here today.

Rather than deal with the underlying cause of the gas crisis and ensure that gas exports work for the national economic interest, the government are now focused on the immediate crisis. They have implemented a domestic gas security mechanism, with export controls to be applied by the resources minister in 2018 at the earliest. As proof that this export control is intended to ensure that future gas developments are in the national interest and that they adequately supply the domestic market, the government has put an automatic five-year expiry on its export control authority. While Labor don't believe this is a perfect solution, we are supportive and in fact have called for export controls to be imposed sooner than envisaged under the government's time line. In addition, the government's mechanism doesn't explicitly reference or address the key issue of gas prices. This is a major factor in the gas crisis.

But the greatest criticism of the government's handling of the gas crisis—besides its mendacity, historical revisionism and buck-passing, four years into government, and of course an absolute refusal to acknowledge that a crisis even existed until the outcry from business was deafening—relates to the government's handling of its own export control mechanism. This mechanism relies on the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia to declare a gas shortage year in the following calendar year before export controls can be put in place. At the time of drafting, the resources minister was Senator Canavan, from Queensland. Of course, we know that Senator Canavan has now stood down and made the decision that he will not take part in any votes until the situation around his eligibility is clarified. His successor on this same portfolio, the member for New England, hasn't made this same decision. Even though the minister's eligibility to sit in this place is currently before the High Court, the Prime Minister and the acting resources minister are seemingly willing and able to risk the legal integrity of their response to the gas crisis in order to shore up the actual government and the Prime Minister's job. Once again, it's putting the government before the actual needs of the country.

This is not a minor distraction. It's not a minor argument. According to legal experts, including George Williams of the University of New South Wales, if the minister takes action to restrict exports next year and is subsequently found ineligible to sit in this place and serve as the minister, his decisions will be subject to credible legal challenge by industry. These decisions involve billions of dollars' worth of gas trade and the viability of swathes of Australian industry. These are not light matters. The government's regulations call on the minister to declare whether 2018 will be a gas shortage year by, preferably, 1 September. We need to have this decision about next year now. We are now at 5 September and there is still no word from the member for New England on declaring 2018 a gas shortage year and imposing export controls.

This is serious, but it's only the latest sad episode of the government's mismanagement of Australia's energy system and resources. It's no wonder that they have the record that they do. This has been put on record a number of times, but I just want to put it on record again. There has been a doubling of wholesale electricity prices, an inability to agree on a clean energy target to support new-generation investment, growing carbon pollution, a full-blown gas price and supply crisis, and mismanagement of export controls. The record continues, but the crisis remains.

(Quorum formed)