Taylor's move to waste more public money propping up gas will cost Australians dearly

Far too much public money has already been wasted on the polluting unconventional gas industry, and Angus Taylor's "gas investment framework" announcement today will do nothing to help the Australian economy recover from Covid-19.

Protect Country Alliance spokesperson Graeme Sawyer said the fracking industry in the NT, which was still in an exploratory phase, was being propped up by corporate welfare on a massive scale.

"The Morrison Government would be better off giving taxpayer money to just about any other industry if it wanted to seriously stimulate the economy," he said.

"Fracking, particularly in remote areas of the NT, is already an extremely marginal pursuit - if these projects can't stand up by themselves, the Morrison Government definitely should not be wasting our hard earned tax dollars on them.

"Instead, along with the NT's Gunner Government, they are funneling tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into an industry that simply cannot continue as the world decarbonises.

"The public will likely be left to clean up stranded assets and ongoing pollution from abandoned fracking operations as the world increasingly turns to less polluting ways to generate energy."

Lock the Gate Alliance National Coordinator Carmel Flint said, "As well as draining groundwater, degrading landscapes, and contributing to climate change, the unconventional gas industry is also a notoriously low employer.

"Studies showed that as the coal seam gas industry expanded in Queensland, each job created in CSG actually came at a loss of 1.8 farming jobs.

"Gas doesn't create new jobs - it just takes them from existing industries that are pushed out."

"This corporate welfare is all about propping up multinational fracking giants who are short on gas for their huge export plants in Gladstone.

"If Mr Taylor was at all serious about looking after Aussies, he'd stop companies like Origin from exporting gas by the shipload overseas and this so-called shortage would evaporate overnight."

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