25th Feb 2021, 11:57 AM – Senate Motions - Gas Industry - Implement Callaghan Report recommendations

The majority voted in favour of a motion introduced by Queensland Senator Pauline Hanson (One Nation), which means it passed. Motions like these don't make any legal changes on their own but are politically influential as they represent the will of the Senate.

Motion text

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) Australians own vast reserves of offshore natural gas and the Australian Government manages these vast reserves on behalf of the people of Australia,

(ii) every other country in the world receives higher payments for its gas than Australia,

(iii) the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recently found that Australia is the only large gas producer in the world where the domestic price of gas is higher than the price of exported gas,

(iv) the Western Australian domestic gas reserve policy has been avoided at every opportunity by foreign gas companies,

(v) the Government's inquiry into petroleum resource rent tax legislation in 2017 made 12 recommendations of which none have been implemented, and

(vi) the Government's gas-led recovery strategy is a fiction until the government reforms the gas laws; and

(b) calls on the Government to implement the Callaghan Report recommendations.