Ian Verrender

And he told me this story about how

He was sitting in a room with, you know, the chief executive, senior executives from the biggest resources companies around the world about, this is really around Northwest Shelf and all of the offshore gas projects that happen there.

And apparently at one stage, you know, he said, look, we're going to have this gas reservation policy just to ensure that there's enough gas for Western Australians into the future.

And so for every bit of gas you export, there's going to be 10% of that reserved

Western Australians.

He said, somebody thumped the table and said, there will not be one molecule of gas that will be reserved for domestic use.

If that's the case, the deal's off.

And he said, well, if that's the situation, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to have wasted your time.

Meeting's over.

Next day, there's a

We've gone through the numbers again.

We can make it work, yeah.

And so it's worked quite well for Western Australia.

And if you've only got to look at that Ukraine crisis a few years back and gas prices in the West, despite it exporting far more than we do here on the East Coast,

gas prices in the West were substantially below what the East Coast gas prices were.

And unfortunately, there's no pipeline between Western Australia and the East Coast, which would have equalized the prices somewhat.

Look, I think it's going to be a lot easier for businesses to source domestic gas supplies at a reasonable price.

You know, during the period when I think it was when the Labor government had imposed that price cap of, say, $12 a gigajoule, and particularly through the Ukraine crisis, I

think gas prices went to about $23 a gigajoule if you're a business trying to lock in long-term supplies.

So it was just uneconomical for most big industrial users.