QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms MADELEINE KING (Brand—Minister for Resources and Minister for Northern Australia) (14:07): I thank the member for Hunter for his question. He knows the vital importance of our resources sector. Today the Albanese Labor government introduced a package of bills to implement a national gas reservation scheme.

This will be Australia's first national gas reservation scheme, securing the gas that Australian homes and businesses need at fair prices. This is significant structural reform, and it is about using Australia's resources to power Australian jobs, manufacturing and long-term energy and economic security. When we came to government in 2022, Australia faced an energy crisis driven by supply disruptions, ageing coal generators and an extraordinary upheaval in international gas markets.

This culminated in gas being offered, under the rules that those opposite put through, into a domestic market price of well over $60 a gigajoule. That was unacceptable—unacceptable to this government and of course unacceptable to the Australian people. Following a decade of inaction by those opposite, we acted quickly and decisively.

We reformed the Domestic Gas Security Mechanism and the heads of agreement; in fact, we made sure it even worked. We implemented a gas market code of conduct. We capped the price of gas at $12 a gigajoule, which was opposed by those opposite.

We released a Future Gas Strategy, which set out the role gas will play in the transition to net zero and how our gas will help our trading partners transition along their pathway to net zero. We also commissioned a gas market review which established the need for a national reservation scheme, and now we have moved to implement that scheme, moving us beyond short-term ad hoc interventions to an enduring solution in a structural manner to make sure there is an enduring means of managing the national gas market.

This reservation scheme will ensure that more Australian gas is made available to Australian households, manufacturers and industries at fair prices. Australia needs gas to keep our manufacturing sector strong. We need it to back up the uptake of renewables as they continue to come online.

We need gas to heat our homes. We need gas to process more critical minerals and rare earths in Australia. Everyone in this House and in the other place has a choice.

It is up to every member of this chamber, whether they be from the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Greens political party, One Nation or the crossbench. It is for each and every one of them to decide if they want to support more affordable gas for Australian households and businesses. That's a choice we all need to make.

The Albanese government will be trusted to deliver a national gas reservation scheme. (Time expired)