Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) | Hansard source

Yesterday I rose and spoke about the Governor-General's speech. I don't want to repeat what I said yesterday, but in general terms I found that the Governor-General's speech, which of course is the government's speech, was something that was pretty uninspiring. It laid out a bunch of housekeeping things that Australia needed to keep doing, but there was no vision in there. There was nothing in there that would excite Australians into thinking that we have a way forward that's going to be really good for everyone.

One thing I did talk about, however, was some concerns I had regarding the extraction and export of Australia's oil and gas resources by multinational companies across Australia without Australia maximising the benefit from these finite resources. I want to expand on those concerns that I raised yesterday. The Australian economy has a high dependency on the extraction and supply of natural resources, of which our oil and gas sector is a significant component. In 2018, natural gas and crude petroleum combined represented an 11.7 per cent share of Australia's total exports.

The discovery and extraction of oil and gas have delivered substantial benefits to many nations around the world.