Gas reservation a welcome stop, but it’s not the destination

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During a press conference in Perth last June, newly re-elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked about Western Australia’s domestic gas reserve scheme and whether the east coast should follow the example. Pointing to the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism, set up by the Turnbull government in 2017, he insisted “there is a mechanism in place right now” to ensure supply.

That mechanism gives the government the power to force liquefied natural gas producers to divert exports to the local market in the event of a shortfall, but it has never been triggered.

“It’s a very different position from the one that the Coalition advanced during the election campaign, which seemed to have been plucked out of a Coco Pops packet one morning,” Albanese declared.

The plans announced this week for an east coast gas reservation – a policy that will prevent companies from exporting all the gas they extract from beneath this country and its waters – are different again from those Peter Dutton proposed, in one of his few concrete policy offerings of that campaign. But once the Coalition opened the cereal box, it was always possible that political pressure would compel Labor to see what was inside.

The Age welcomes the government’s........

© WA Today