QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) (14:04): Thank you to Senator Polley for that question. The Albanese government's gas reservation plan will reserve Australian gas for Australians and for Australian industry. It will make Australia stronger.

Australia is already an energy superpower, and the gas reservation plan supercharges that potential in particular for Australian industry and Australian heavy industry. This gas reservation delivers Australia's energy transition and it sets us up for generations of prosperity, particularly in regional Australia. This Labor government looks to the future.

We know that you can't be for manufacturing and blue-collar jobs if you are against reserving Australian gas for Australians. You can't be for manufacturing and blue-collar jobs if you are obsessed with shutting down the cheapest form of energy. You can't build a future for industries like Whyalla steel if you are frightened of the future yourselves and if you tell deliberate falsehoods about what happened at the Whyalla blast furnace.

You can't build a future for Whyalla by looking to the past and being a Tony Abbott tribute band. Tony Abbott was the man who chased the car industry out of Australia all for knights and dames—plus five knights and dames and minus 40,000 blue-collar jobs in the Australian automotive industry. Now we've got poor old Mr Taylor, the former cost-cutting consultant whose advice to the Australian aluminium industry was, 'Go to China.' Angus Taylor's advice was to go to China.

(Time expired) The PRESIDENT: Senator Polley, first supplementary?