Australian Greens: Big Gas Profits Driving Domestic Price Rises

Australian Greens: Big Gas Profits Driving Domestic Price Rises

Commenting on reports today that gas bills are set to increase as LNG exports through Queensland ramp up, Senator Larissa Waters, Australian Greens spokesperson for mining said:

Foreign-owned gas exporters are destroying our farmland, risking our groundwater and the Great Barrier Reef and are now making cost-of-living worse for Australians by driving up the price of gas.

“The foreign multinationals causing the problem by hoovering up domestic gas for export at record prices are now saying that the solution to household price rises is to mine and frack even more gas, risking even more farmland and water.

“Not only is this self-serving and economically flawed – because once our domestic gas market is operating at international prices, any increase in domestic gas supply would not have a significant impact on prices – it is also environmentally perilous.

“The Greens think that clean water and food security is worth more that overseas mining profits.

“Successive state and federal governments have failed the community by not considering the economic and environmental costs that the CSG industry and its export would have on Australians, when approving the massive LNG export projects.

“The rapid transition to clean renewable energy is the solution which will address climate change, protect land and water and guard against increasing power prices.

“Right when Governments should be supporting the roll out of cost-competitive renewable energy, the Abbott Government wants to junk the renewable energy target and abandon the carbon price, while it attacks the very science of climate change and takes advice from deniers like Maurice Newman and Dick Warburton.

“The Greens will keep fighting to protect land, water and the climate from dangerous coal seam and shale gas, and to keep power prices affordable with renewable energy and the jobs it provides,” Senator Waters said.

Source: Greens, April 24, 2014