And then there was this question:

Q: What gives you the confidence that gas giants are actually going to come to the table with these negotiations? Are you prepared to put in legislation to essentially force them to gather more gas into the grid? 

Dutton: 

And that’s exactly our plan. Our plan is to make sure that we can bring 50 to 100 petajoules into the system. Now that will vary according to the demand and according to the season, but by bringing that additional supply into the market, we put downward pressure on prices and that is a very significant thing that’s not happening now.

At the moment you’ve got a situation where the government is choking supply – so they’re stopping gas coming into the system – which is what will force up prices, and we say to the companies that there is a requirement to put that back into the system through the mechanism that we put in place. The important thing to remember here is that Mr Albanese is promising to increase the price of gas and electricity. We are promising to reduce it and that is something that only a Coalition government can deliver and we’ve outlined that plan

It is important to note that when Dutton is speaking about ‘choking supply’ he means the government isn’t approving enough new gas fields. But we do not need new gas fields to have a gas reservation policy – we have plenty of gas already, it is just that we export 80% of it.

So the more pertinent question is about getting the gas companies to reserve more of the gas they would be exporting for the domestic market – and at domestic prices, so Australians are not paying international prices for their own gas.

This is something Dutton DID address on Saturday when he spoke to Weekend Sunrise:

We can do it straight away because the gas is there, it’s being produced now. It doesn’t require any infrastructure. It is a matter of turning it back into the economy. “

That hasn’t been repeated again today – instead Dutton is back to talking about opening up more gasfields (which isn’t needed).

For example, the opposition is committed to immediately approving the North West Shelf gas field extension – a project which is for 100% exports of LNG. It will not add anything to domestic gas… but it will add the equivalent of 12 new coal fired power stations worth of emissions over the next 50 years.