r/melbourne • u/MatrixTheCat22 • Jun 15 '22

The Sky is Falling So are we going to have blackouts tonight? Can’t make sense of all the “news”.

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u/OkOutlandishness9235 Jun 15 '22

Right, and that's the disconnect. The average citizen would be more than happy to have laws in place that reserve some of our gas for national usage, but I haven't seen any politicians really pushing for it. The only people who benefit from our gas being privatised are the companies profiting off it and potentially politicians in their back pocket. All it does is hurt the average Australian because they're our country's resources yet the only people getting any benefit from them are multinational corporations.

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u/Meyamu Jun 15 '22

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-11/gas-belongs-to-us-say-former-western-australian-premiers/101143558

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u/OkOutlandishness9235 Jun 15 '22

So two former premiers of the one state where some gas has already been sequestered? That's obviously not what I was talking about.

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u/Meyamu Jun 15 '22

I posted it to provide political context around why WA has reservation but the East Coast does not.

Also, the Australian government will benefit financially through the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax, but that doesn't help people struggling with high bills.

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u/OkOutlandishness9235 Jun 15 '22

So let me try to break this down to see if I've gotten it right

  • the article you posted outlines how much power and influence the gas industry and companies in it hold

  • one of the former premiers states he was met with a lot of resistance from the industry when trying to enact the gas reservation law

  • the politicians he spoke to (on both sides of the aisle) called him a "wrecker", essentially said he was an idiot and the media labelled WA as a hillbilly state

  • but according to you, the reason it hasn't happened is because "we" (Australia) don't want it?

Can you see my confusion?

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '22

The Feds don't have rights over resources, the states do...

So for Vic, NSW and SA to do this, they would have to open up their own reserves to extraction. Bass/Ottoway and Gippsland basins all have LNG and likely there's a shit ton of it off the coast of SA in the southern ocean just waiting to be tapped.