Sam McMahon (NT, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the matter of urgency. I would just like to start by saying that there has been a crime committed here, and the crime is Senator McKim's motion, in that it demonstrates a complete lack of genuine understanding and knowledge of basic chemistry and perpetuates John Kerry's apparent scientific qualifications and practical experience of oil and gas and energy in general.

The motion talks of 'massive amounts of toxic methane'. Well, sorry—when I did chemistry, methane was not toxic. It's actually biologically inert and it is only harmful if it displaces oxygen, which leads to asphyxiation, or as a flammable gas in large concentrations. If you strike a match and you're down a mine and there's lots of methane, it will blow you up. So it can be harmful, but it is not toxic. It is certainly not going to be deliberately mass released into the atmosphere. The whole point of methane is that it has a value. It's a valuable gas. When we talk about the oil and gas industry, we don't just take it out of the ground and throw it up into the atmosphere. We collect it and we do things with it. Methane has many uses. It's used in LNG, in—ironically—hydrogen production, and in the production of ammonia and other chemicals.

The Beetaloo Basin—which is what we're talking about—is in my neck of the woods in the Northern Territory. If we put the gas reserves into perspective, the gross potential revenue from the Beetaloo Basin would be in the order of $1.7 trillion. This is the equivalent of all of Australia's annual GDP, so we're talking about fairly high-value commodities here. The development of the Beetaloo has the potential to create 6,000 jobs by 2040. Six thousand jobs in the Beetaloo region of the Northern Territory is absolutely massive and staggering. Historically, there have been very few labour market opportunities in this region of the Northern Territory other than the pastoral industry. In 2016, the region's unemployment rate was almost double the Territory's unemployment rate. This likely understates the real jobless rate in the region, with only half of all people of working age in a job or actively looking for one. There are many more people who are unemployed than turn up in official figures, so jobs represents one of the best opportunities for the Beetaloo Basin and for this entire region of the Northern Territory. I know that the Greens don't care about regional Australia, but I and my coalition colleagues do. In this case, so do Senator Watt and Joel Fitzgibbon; they know how important the oil and gas industry is.

Here are a couple of fun facts about the Beetaloo. It's approximately 5,000 kilometres south-east of Darwin in the Northern Territory. It lies between Katherine, 100 kilometres to the north, and Tennant Creek, 250 kilometres to the south. The Stuart Highway bisects the sub-basin from north to south. It covers an area of 28,000 square kilometres and comprises mainly vast rolling plains. It sits within the larger—at 180,000 square kilometres—McArthur Basin, which covers the majority of the north-east of the Northern Territory. Population is very sparse. Fewer than 1,500 people reside in the rural communities which border, or lie within, the Beetaloo. Most of the land in the Beetaloo is used for cattle grazing and Indigenous land practices. Perpetual leasehold covers most of the Beetaloo region. Native title exists for most of these leases, and the rest are under application. Tennant Creek is the key service centre of the Barkly region. It has a population of 3,200, and the town has a long history of mining and cattle grazing. Tennant Creek also has a strong Indigenous presence, comprising 51 per cent of the population.

I would reject the premise of the Greens that Indigenous people oppose the oil and gas industry in the Beetaloo region. Many of them have engaged with oil and gas exploration companies and have come to agreements with those companies or are in the process of coming to agreements with those companies because they realise that this represents their best opportunity at economic independence and jobs for their people. They know that, at the moment, there is very little to look forward to in the way of economy and jobs in this region of the Northern Territory, and they understand the importance that the development of this basin will have for their economic independence. That is something that the Greens do not want traditional owners to have. They want to keep them oppressed. They want to keep them living in communities that have no economic opportunity whatsoever. They don't want to see them lift out of a lack of an economy. They don't want to see them get jobs. They don't want to see them get training. They don't want to see them get trades. They do not want to see the economic development of traditional owners and Indigenous people in the Northern Territory.

With regard to our future energy mix, we understand that gas has a role to play. Yes, solar, wind and a whole pile of other, emerging technologies and intermittent generators also have a role to play, but they need to be firmed. We understand that gas is one of the best ways that we currently have to do this in a transition to a future energy mix. Gas will continue to underpin these emerging industries, and gas will be a way forward from a fossil fuel based economy to a future economy where intermittent generators will have a role to play.

The development of the Beetaloo and the technological development of renewable gases, such as hydrogen and biomethane, will complement each other. If we look at where methane comes from—seeing as it's such an evil, horrible and non-toxic gas—methane obviously comes from the oil and gas industry, extracted from the land and the seabed. It also comes from biomass burning, from livestock and from waste management practices.

If we look at emissions, the government's gas-fired recovery measures are a key component of our transition, as I said, to future energy mixes. That may include wind, solar or pumped hydro and it may also include hydrogen, which the Greens like to trot out as the renewable energy mix of the future—the panacea for everything that's evil about the oil and gas industry and fossil fuels. Let me tell you: nearly all hydrogen on the planet today is ironically manufactured from—guess what?—that evil, evil methane. Does that make hydrogen evil as well? Maybe it does.

If the Greens truly want to go as fast as they can to low emissions or no emissions, then they should consider gas as a transition fuel and nuclear power generation in their mix of renewables and intermittent generators.