McDonald/Hawke/Chaffey - Media Release - GAS RESERVATION LIGHT ON DETAIL, IGNORES ROOT CAUSES OF GAS MARKET FAILURES

Media statement

22 December 2025

GAS RESERVATION LIGHT ON DETAIL, IGNORES ROOT CAUSES OF GAS MARKET FAILURES

The Albanese Government has been dragged kicking and screaming into finally realising the urgent need to secure Australian gas for Australians, yet have provided no detail as to how they will support new gas investments, new gas infrastructure, or remove their failed interventions.

Ten months after the Coalition announced our policy to secure Australian Gas for Australians, the Government has accepted the reality that the gas market has broken after three years of Labor failures.

While Labor’s recognition that we need a gas reservation is welcome, it is too little, too late - it will not commence market-wide until 2027 and their policy will not address the very immediate possible shortfalls, with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today reporting potential East Coast shortfalls in winter of 2026.

Labor’s detail-free policy does not address the root causes of this gas policy failure: a continued lack of investment in new supply by gas-reliant States, insufficient investment in critical gas infrastructure like storage and pipelines, and the repeated failed market interventions which has not brought down prices or secured supply and has undermined gas investment appetite.

Labor’s failure to deliver affordable and reliable energy to Australia’s industrial base has crippled Aussie manufacturers, risked jobs, driven investment offshore and led to a series of bandaid bailouts.

Key basins like the Beetaloo, Narrabri, Barossa, Browse, Cooper and Scarborough are all critical to supporting our gas market, and the Coalition is committed to unlocking these basins with streamlined approvals and infrastructure investments, and gas delivery being included to the investment mandate of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Labor has ignored all of these basins and the new domestic supply this could unlock.

Labor’s track record on gas speaks for itself, from Cabinet Ministers repeatedly demonising the role of gas, to the dirty deal done with the Greens political party to block needed new gas projects from streamlined approvals – it is clear that the Albanese Labor Government do not support gas or the crucial role it plays in Australia’s energy mix.

This announcement, limited in any concrete detail of the operation of the reservation, the pathways to unlocking new gas investment, the amount that gas and energy prices will decrease, or the supporting infrastructure needed to get gas where it needs to be, will not provide any investment certainty to gas producers or customers.

The Coalition will await to see the further detail that the Government provides, but as it stands, this is an announcement devoid of concrete policy outcomes and blind to the root causes of Labor’s gas crisis.

ENDS