GARY ADSHEAD: A white paper, consultation paper has been released publicly today by the Federal Government, it's called Future Gas Strategy consultation paper.

So it looks at how long into the future we're going to need gas, how it will be used, how much of it we'll be exporting and so on. It throws up a lot of the facts and figures, but it wants feedback from the public about this as well.

It's all those stakeholders of course in the industries that Madeleine King is the Federal Resources Minister and joins me on the line.

Thanks very much for your time, Minister.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Pleasure to be here, Gary.

GARY ADSHEAD: Now then, it's always an interesting discussion, and only the other day we had David Pocock on the program talking about Woodside sponsorship of the Fremantle Dockers and how it was time that companies like Woodside took a back seat and didn't use any social licence by sponsoring footy teams and so on because, you know, they're fossil fuel companies and they need to sort of just disappear.

You're putting this out there because the reality is we are going to need gas for quite a long time, aren't we?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well that's right, Gary, and if I could just comment on the Fremantle sponsorship by Woodside.

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: What Senator Pocock might not know is Woodside has been committed to Fremantle for, I think they're in their 15th year of sponsorship, and there's been   as you might know, I'm a Freo fan, we've soon some highs and lows over that time and Woodside have been committed to Fremantle, as well as a lot of indigenous development and footy development work up in the north of our State. And I think they should be respected for that. They are not rocking up lately and just trying to, you know, get on a bandwagon. Which, you know, hopefully gets better and better for us as Fremantle fans.

GARY ADSHEAD: No comment.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I would wonder if David knows the difference between Luke Ryan or Meg Ryan. I mean does he really? So I just don't think it's fair that someone from Canberra, and he literally lives in Canberra, to kind of have a crack at one of our great footy teams here in the West, and a company that employs thousands of people and many, many indigenous people and powers our State as well as powers our region.

So, you know, just to draw a line in the sand on my view on the Woodside sponsorship of Freo.

GARY ADSHEAD: While we're just on that subject then, obviously the Scarborough gas development and in terms of that court decision last week, what was your reaction to the fact that a person who says that they were not properly consulted could take, well sort of NOPSEMA and Woodside if you like to the Federal Court and get a halt on all of Woodside's seismic testing in relation to Scarborough? That really is a game changer, isn't it?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: It's based - this court decision is a consequence of another court decision that was earlier in the year in relation to another project off the Northern Territory, and this is causing some, I guess   I mean it is confusion and I don't like that, but we are working on a review of the regulations to try and make sure there is more certainty about affected people and the consultation process.

Because what we have seen, and I think I don't have any objection to the judicial review process, but what we've seen, and some of the consultations have been less than ideal.

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: And the gas companies and they know this, they really need to improve, and they have been improving. You couldn't miss the consultation ads throughout all the newspapers around the country about various projects. So they're lifting their game but, you know, I accept that we need to review the regulations to make sure there's certainty for everyone; for our First Nations affected, for other communities affected by projects, but also for the proponents of these gas projects.

And this is a fuel we will need into the future and that's what the Future Gas Strategy is about also, is having a wider understanding of our needs now in the medium and into the long term, and not just Australia's needs or Western Australia's needs but how that gas industry can assist our international partners in Japan and South Korea and our close neighbours in Singapore, go through their transition to net zero.

GARY ADSHEAD: I mean the reality is though that the person that took that case to court with the Environmental Defenders Office, which the Federal Government fund so, you know, you sort of made a rod for your own back on that one. Can I just say that I spoke to her on the program, and she wasn't going to change her mind, consultation or no consultation, and she had gone to meetings and asked questions and so on. So what does it mean to consult someone any more? And I mean in terms of other future developments on gas fields and so on, let alone the one that's now sort of got an issue, this is a lot of uncertainty, so how quick can you make the move to change legislation?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: You're right, there is confusion around what consultation actually entails and we do need to fix that and we're working on that now. That work has been going on for a couple of months now, so we're well aware of it and we just have to go through a thorough process on changing what will be regulations for NOPSEMA, so that's something I know it's urgent and I know it's urgent to everybody, whether it's those in the community but equally proponents of the projects.

We do need to acknowledge that we will need this gas into the future, and any of these gas projects are also subject to the laws of the land in terms of reducing their emissions and the safeguard mechanism as well. So it's not like these projects going ahead mean, you know, it's free range for something like that. They've got obligations to decarbonise their operations and have offsets and sequester carbon.

The proponents are fine with that, the gas companies accept that because as you would know Woodside and others accepted the need to move to net zero by 2050 well before the Commonwealth Government did under the former Government. So they've got plans in place for this.

Equally, we need to make sure people are consulted, there is a clarity around what that means and I'm working on that right now.

GARY ADSHEAD: And one of the things it does say in this consultation paper, it says that you would expect that exports of gas product overseas could drop by $100 billion in the next two years and that there's a suggestion that would make, you know, our costs and expenses in terms of electricity and so on and gas supply in WA more expensive. Do you think that's going to happen? Because we had it pretty good here.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: We've had it pretty good and that is, you know, the result of successive governments in Western Australia making sure that development occurred in an orderly fashion, and also of course our gas reservation policy, which is the envy of the world, quite frankly.

But whether there will be decreasing demand for gas as the world decarbonises. The strategy discussion paper likes to I guess provoke a bit of discussion about what that level will be, and we will also do further studies into that as we work on the strategy itself. That will be an important part of how we run these consultations, seek consultations from others, and the international partners themselves. Because we need to understand more about the transition plans of the countries we export our gas to so that we can plan our gas strategy, for want of a better term.

GARY ADSHEAD: Out of interest, you know, a lot of people say, "Well we need to get away from using gas cookers and gas hot water storage systems" and so on. Is the Federal Government looking at ways to help people electrify? And I mean by way of subsidy for battery storage, domestic battery storage? Because we've seen all the rebates and the subsidies go on in relation to solar, but the next step surely has got to be enabling people to store it themselves?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, we have a program of supporting community batteries and that's already been or is currently rolling out around the country under Minister Bowen. So that's a shared storage facility which makes a lot of sense, and you combine what different households can attract through solar panels into community battery storage.

Whether there are individual subsidies for individual houses having batteries, that's a whole other matter for consideration. The other flip side of this is of course to make all those batteries for all those houses. We're still going to need and will always need Western Australia's resources sector because of the critical minerals that are also needed, you know, by everyone around the world.

GARY ADSHEAD: Just if I could finish on it because I started with it.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yes, sure.

GARY ADSHEAD: Only yesterday there was another graffiti attack, this time it was on the Fremantle Dockers' headquarters in relation to the Woodside sponsorship. They graffitied some tag that I didn't even know what it meant. It was something about Fremantle being simps to Woodside. I don't know even know what it means so the millennials need to    

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I don't either.

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah, I know. I think they need to speak a common language. But, you know, what do you say to those people that continually protest, go to the houses of the CEO of Woodside, what do you say to them?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, I mean, I don't mind a protest, right. A peaceful protest is a legitimate part of our society. But I do object strongly to intimidation, which is what Meg O'Neill suffered. I object to destruction of property which sounds like what's happened down at the Cockburn Fremantle headquarters. I also object, but probably not as importantly, to poor language because I don't know what simps means either, but I'm 50 so maybe I'm not meant to know.

GARY ADSHEAD: Simps.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, simps.

GARY ADSHEAD: I thought they were trying to type or write up there that, you know, Adam Simpson was on his way to the Freo Dockers.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Oh no, don't do it.

GARY ADSHEAD: I missed it.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: But, you know, I say to them show a bit of respect, you know. I get that people are worried about climate change, I am too and that's why I'm part of a government that's taking action. But we need to consider everybody, not just those that can afford to change over their cooker tomorrow to induction. Not those that can afford to move to solar panels, you know, next week. You know, a lot of people, we know there's a cost of living crisis so not everyone can make these changes in the next month or six months or whatever. So, you know, we've just got to consider everyone and, you know, quite frankly stop being little bullies around this stuff.

GARY ADSHEAD: All right, Minister. Thanks very much for that. Now that consultation paper, people can take part in it, can't they? They can actually have their say.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Absolutely, it's an open consultation. Yeah, National Future Gas Strategy. I don't have the web page but, you know, people just Google that and they'll find it online, the Department's website.

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah, it is, consult.industry.gov.au/future-gas-strategy. Whoever in the government comes up with these links    

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: All that simple stuff, yeah.

GARY ADSHEAD: Blows my mind. All right, appreciate your time.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Great, talk to you later.

GARY ADSHEAD: That's the Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King there.

ENDS