2 days Ago By Bronte Gossling
Follow our live coverage of the 2025 federal election here . Australians now have a shock new gas policy to consider when going to the polls on May 3, courtesy of Peter Dutton – but is his unprecedented scheme simply a bid to win political points as he and Anthony Albanese circle each other on the campaign trail? Or is it a legitimate method to keeping our appliances running, and ourselves warm, at a relatively low, or lower, cost? Talking to Samantha Selinger-Morris on The Morning Edition podcast , our business reporter Nick Toscano and climate and energy reporter Mike Foley wade through the spin and tell us which energy plan is best, not just for us but also for the environment. To listen to the full episode, click the player below or read on for an edited extract of the conversation.
Foley: It’s not the main part of electricity generation ...
But gas helps set the price of your electricity bill. And we’re currently starting to run short of gas supplies. That makes the price of it go up.
It makes your hip pocket hurt more. And Peter Dutton is saying, ‘I’ve got this shock move to punish all the big dodgy gas companies and steal gas off them in a Robin Hood move to help Australians have more of it’. It’s a lot more complicated than that, of course, but that’s what we’re being told by Peter Dutton.
Toscano: The rhetoric from the Dutton opposition is they’re aiming to flood the Australian market with gas by really speeding up environmental assessments so ...
If you’re a private company, get your project approved in half the time that it would normally take, and make it much easier for developers to build their projects, much easier for investment to flow into those developments ...
I think we really don’t have any detail yet of how they plan to halve those approval times. So let’s just call it a value statement rather than a detailed plan at the moment. Foley: The Albanese government says in the event of a shortage, we’ll nab some of your exports .
.. and force them to stay at home so we don’t run out of gas.
The Dutton government is saying, no, that’s not good enough for us. We’re just going to make the producers keep a bunch of it at home ..
. The Dutton plan obviously has some popular appeal ..
. The Albanese government hasn’t gone that far down the populist route because the government of the day has to actually implement plans. It’s a lot easier to say stuff in opposition than when you’re in government .
.. They might let the price rise like it has been for the past decade, but they would always have legal recourse to keep some of the gas at home.
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