KIERAN GILBERT: Welcome back to Newsday. Joining me live in the studio is the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Madeleine King. Minister, thanks for your time. What are the implications, what does it mean for our gas supply, given the impact on the Strait of Hormuz in this conflict?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on again, Kieran. It’s good to see you. Look, obviously it’s a very serious situation playing out right now in the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the largest – well, small channel but, you know, it has a remarkable amount of trade that goes through it. For our gas supplies, Australia remains very well supplied with LNG and gas into our own system. And the situation is very different now from when we took government in 2022 when, you know, we felt – we experienced and people around the country felt the gas crisis –

KIERAN GILBERT: With the Ukraine shock?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: That’s right, yeah, with Russia’s –

KIERAN GILBERT: So how is it different now?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, first of all, a lot has happened in policy terms that the Government has enacted since that moment. So when we first came into government in 2022 we had that illegal invasion of Russia by Ukraine – of Ukraine by Russia, a real stop to the gas from Russia, so the pressure came out of Europe. It changed international markets in a heartbeat. What is different now is firstly the confluence of events that existed then aren’t present now. At the time in Australia we had problems with our coal production and coal-fired power plants. They are notoriously unreliable because they’re aged and we had what was called wet coal – couldn’t go into the energy system. We also had issues at the Longford Gas Processing Plant at the time. It was also winter, so the depths of winter, so there was really high demand. And another thing that has changed since then is that there is more LNG being produced in Canada and the United States into the system. But really importantly is the Australian Government took action and introduced the code of conduct as well as strengthening domestic gas mechanisms.

KIERAN GILBERT: So you’re not worried about the impact on our gas supply?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I am keeping a very, very watchful eye because we know how that war –

KIERAN GILBERT: So what are the risks here?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, risks are that the war goes on for a very long time and that there are - demands elsewhere, peak. We are going to be in winter in a few short months. So we have to be very mindful of supply. I’m confident we’ve put the right policies in place to make sure if things change that we can react more quickly. When we came into government the Domestic Gas Security Mechanism could only be implemented every year. Now we can implement it much more quickly than before.

KIERAN GILBERT: So that’s supply, one thing. Keeping a lid on the price as well?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, that’s the Code of Conduct work that we did. You might recall – and, you know, your viewers might recall – we recalled parliament in December of 2022 to make sure we could introduce and pass that legislation to put a cap on prices. And what that did really importantly was it delinked the domestic pricing market in Australia from the very high international prices. So right now we’re seeing the price of gas in Europe and the United States go up while ours, in fact, is remaining very constant. The spot price domestically is just under $10 a gigajoule.

KIERAN GILBERT: Okay, so it’s watch and wait for you. You’ve got to keep an eye on it.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Very much so.

KIERAN GILBERT: You’ve got to watch it, but in terms of another area, farmers – we’ve a lot of farmers watching the program, and I want to just provide some clarity around fertiliser, essentially urea. We get 50 per cent of our urea that makes the fertiliser from – well, comes through the Strait of Hormuz, doesn’t it?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: My understanding is, yeah, that’s right. So we are quite dependant on imports from around the world of urea, which is the nitrogen aspect of MPK, which all farmers will know is a very important fertiliser. So – and much of that does come from – through the Strait of Hormuz. So right now we are well stocked. There is a lot of the – the companies that do this, like Wesfarmers and WesCEF and other production facilities around the country are making fertiliser all the time. We do have other suppliers. But really importantly through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility we have supported the Perdaman Urea Project in Karratha. Now that doesn’t start production until about March of next year --

KIERAN GILBERT: So this is a sovereign capacity to produce urea here?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Very much so. So, using liquid natural gas from offshore Western Australia, it goes into the production of urea at the Perdaman Project. And this is a $6 billion project in north Western Australia. It is one of the largest manufacturing projects this country has ever undertaken. And the investment that our government has put into it is also of historic proportions. And that is to make sure we have that resilience for the production of urea which goes into fertiliser --

KIERAN GILBERT: What’s the investment from the government, though, as part of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund it’s a combination – it’s up to about over $300 million. So, $220 million directly to Perdaman but a complementary $160 million to the Pilbara Ports Authority for the upgrades –

KIERAN GILBERT: A $6 billion project. But we’re not going to export it all, are we?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: No, not at all. We expect half – it’s going to produce a lot of urea, more than we could ever use. But half of it will remain in Australia. And the proponents of the project, the Perdaman Group, have assured us that.

KIERAN GILBERT: Well, that’s timely given the impact of the blockage in Hormuz, the need to have that sovereign capability.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Oh, I know, and that’s when we supported this project through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, we were very well aware that this would be a game changer in our independence and this resilient supply of the fertiliser component that all our farmers need.

KIERAN GILBERT: And on urea, is that the one issue, resource, that has the greatest implication for Australia from the current conflict?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Look --

KIERAN GILBERT: Or is it the oil price?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: There’s a lot. These are all global components into global needs for all sorts of industries. So there’s no doubt it impacts on oil prices around the world, it impacts – there’s always the ripples that float around the world now days. We can never be fully isolated. But if we have resilience built in, which this government has done through the work we’ve done on the gas market and the energy market but also through timely investments in the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility into urea, that all adds up to a more resilient economy to withstand these kinds of international shocks.

KIERAN GILBERT: Finally before you go, not your area of direct responsibility, but do you want to see government funding for any prayer groups or mosques that mourned the tyrant Khamenei, that they should have that money pulled?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, I want to be very clear. I do not understand why anyone would mourn that man and the regime that they have overseen that has done so many evil things – repressed women, tortured their own people, women have to live in dark corners, you cannot be free. And they would stop at nothing to make sure we are not free in this country. So I don’t mourn for them. I know Minister Aly is looking at this closely. She answered this very clearly in question time. She knows the politics of these organisations better than most given her extensive career in anti-terrorist movements, which is very profound knowledge she brings to the cabinet of our country. She has instructed her department to make sure that any applications for funding from these groups is stopped right now and looked into so we can make sure they obey the rules.

KIERAN GILBERT: Okay. Madeleine King, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Thank you, Kieran.

KIERAN GILBERT: Resources Minister Madeline King.