Transcript – Tania Constable interview with Stephen Cenatiempo on 2CC 1206 AM

Topics: Australia’s fuel security, mining’s role in supporting economic resilience, Federal Budget fuel security measures

E&OE

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Now we’ve been talking about News Corp’s Back Australia campaign this week, and day four is focusing on the global fuel shock which has been described as a massive wake up call for Aussie energy independence. To talk to us about this, we’re joined by the CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, Tania Constable. Tania, good morning.

TANIA CONSTABLE: Good morning, Stephen. Great to be with you too.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: You’re more acutely aware than anybody of the energy-rich nature of Australia and our resources abundance. But we’ve neglected it for so long. I guess the real question I want to ask is, as somebody that works in this industry, how quickly can we rebuild that national sovereignty and that fuel security?

TANIA CONSTABLE: It’s not going to happen overnight, Stephen. It will take, I think some years, but we’ve got to start now to get it going. If we do that, then as you said, we’ve got a lot of gas, we’ve got potential for oil in this country, we certainly have a lot of coal and uranium. Those energy sources are not being fully utilised, and they’re being locked out by noisy protesters, by noisy activists, by governments that don’t have the courage to back our fossil fuels industries in Australia because we’re still cutting emissions. We are doing all of that. We just need the backing of the country, and if governments have a bit of guts about them and take our fossil fuels industry along, along with every other critical minerals and other industry across Australia.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: It’s almost being treated like a dirty little secret that the minerals industry props up our economy. And without, you know, iron ore and coal and these kind of things, well, not that our economy’s far from collapsing anyway, but we would be in really dire straits if we didn’t have that resource-rich nature that we have.

TANIA CONSTABLE: Our fossil fuel industries, and our resources industries as a whole, including gold and critical minerals and metals and iron ore, all of those things are so important to Australia because we have an absolute advantage. We do it reasonably low cost, although prices are going up because of energy costs and all of the policies that have been imposed on us over the years that are totally unnecessary. Both costs are going up, but we still have an advantage because we do it really well. We have good regulatory practices, we have the right sort of people in Australia to make sure that we stay ahead of the rest of the world. We just need the backing to do that. The other industry, of course, that I will always call out alongside as a really important partner is agriculture. These two regional industries are the backbone of the economy.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: The thing that strikes me and I remember as a kid, my mum was the sales manager for a plastics company as I was growing up and I remember one of the things that they used to sell a lot of was superphosphate covers. And it occurs to me now that we don’t produce our own fertiliser, which is absolutely extraordinary. We have the resources to do that. But when we talk about more broadly the fossil fuels industry, it’s largely, our neglect has been driven by a fear campaign rather than any good practice. Do you see that? I mean, this has been described as a wake up call, this energy crisis, and that’s what News Corp are calling it this morning. But surely we all saw this coming?

TANIA CONSTABLE: Well, we certainly have and we’ve been saying this for some years, but noisy international activists, noisy countries imposing their values on Australia has been what has caused this. It has meant that our banks haven’t invested in the industry. It’s meant that companies have taken, have taken decisions that haven’t been in the interest of investors or the interests of Australians. And we have been caught on the hop without the right sort of national resilience in Australia. Now that’s not saying that the government is not doing everything they can to get fuel into the country. I think they are. They’ve gone to every country where we’ve got a partnership to try and get fuel. But it’s high cost. I mean, we saw the Straits of Hormuz closing as a scenario and we should have been building this resilience over consecutive governments. This is not just a one-term issue to make sure that we’ve got this resilience and we can.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: I guess the saving grace is the new Coalition leadership in Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan are at least speaking the right language on this. The government did make some inroads in the Budget. What are you, in more broad terms, what are your thoughts on the Budget and particularly what it’s done to try and improve our fuel security?

TANIA CONSTABLE: I think that there’s a number of measures in there that will improve our fuel security. You know, the government-owned Fuel Security Reserve, I think is a good step forward. There’s some support for financial support for fuel companies and increasing the minimum stockholding obligation. I think they’re really important. But what is, I think even more important is making sure that we get domestic supply going, incentivising more domestic supply in Australia, making sure we’ve got exploration occurring in Queensland. The Queenslanders are talking about it. Northern Territory, and I’ve just come off the back of the Australian Energy Producers Conference yesterday and there’s a great news story with Tamboran in the Northern Territory that will have gas flowing within the next few months from the Northern Territory.

But if we want it in New South Wales and we want it in Victoria, who have been abysmal with exploration occurring because they’ve got their own reserves, we need pipelines coming from the Northern Territory into those states. We need to do exploration in Queensland, and the Queenslanders talk about the Taroom Trough, which has plenty of potential for gas. We need to do that in the Australian Bight, which is a huge potential compared to even the Gulf of Mexico and the United States. They’re areas where Australia could be doing a lot more. And on top of that, let’s go, you know, pretty hard with our coal exploration in Queensland and New South Wales because, again, there’s plenty of potential for some of that to be turned into coal to liquids, something, again, we’ve been talking about for years.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Plenty of work to do. Tania, I really appreciate your time this morning.

TANIA CONSTABLE: Pleasure to be with you, Stephen.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: All the best. Tania Constable is the CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia.