Of course lots of money will go into gas, including largely unregulated fracking.  Future generations will pay for this.  Degradation of productive farmland and water contamination will reduce food production, with rural productivity severely reduced.  Better to spend the money on non polluting renewables, the cheapest source of energy available.  China is well aware of this and is spending vast amounts on renewables, so before long we won't have much of a market for our coal and gas anyway.  Have you ever heard of nuclear fusion?  (NO, not fission, with its radioactive waste issues that last hundreds of years.)  China, France, Germany and Great Britain have and are spending large sums of money to cooperatively develop this renewable, non polluting and nuclear waste- free source of energy.  We used to lead the world in this area of research, but now are only at "observer" status in the project, predicted to become viable in the next decade.  Once again, 20th century solutions and short term electoral gains rule in the Canberra leadership (I use the word loosely!) bubble.

Renewables are not the answer for base load consistent power supply. Any electrical engineer will tell you that. Great advances in  nuclear power and definifely needs to be encompassed in power strategy. Coal is and will continue to be a substantial provider and gas.

China will build 200 coal fired power strations in the ensuing years, so 'renewables' will only play a small part in their plans.

Qhat ww do here is so insignificant 8  the world picture.

With private investors already refusing to fund a coal burning energy station, it will be interesting to see if any are interested in gas, particularly if sourced by fracking. Whilst exisiting gas energy stations have a role to play, increasingly shareholders directly and indirectly, via super funds, aren no longer interested in new energy schemes that support global warming and farm land and waterways pollution.  Perhaps the feds should accelerate Snowy 2.0 and Marnius link, increase renewable incentives and give Elon a call.

Government seems to be hoping we’ve all forgotten the Future Fund.  As we are now desperate to pay off our Covid debt it is time to use the fund.  It is, after all, made up from taxpayers surplus so should come back to taxpayers not be locked away for the use of retired politicians.

Australia cannot have too many dams. Increasing the capacity of Wyangala and Dungowan is a good start. The gas exploration should lower the price of gas as we have to buy it from other states and the conditions imposed on Santos should reduce any problems to the environment. It's all well and good to promote renewables  but until a battery storage system is invented to replace baseload power we must continue to maintain coal or gas fired power stations.

The real solution is nuclear but that will involve overturning legislation that outlawed the use of nuclear that was passed by the parliament in 1998 and that will certainly be opposed in the senate. It is absolutely certain that there is climate change just as there has always been climate change and geologists have shown that the earth has been hotter and colder on a regular basis going back before man first trod the earth. Alarmists want us to believe that the current climate change is all the fault of man and therefore man can fix it and politicians have jumped on board as it looks like a vote winner. I would respectfully suggest to the current government to go ahead and build dams where needed, open gas fields, allow access to national parks and build infrastructure without trying to placate the Greenies. The coalition should by now understand that neither Labor nor the Greens voters will vote for the coalition regardless of how much they try and please them nor will they grant preferences on How To Vote cards.

Doesn't matter what we expect   -- we will have our  "specs"  knocked off same as everything this government promises and never delivers