Labor urges govt to expand use of gas - Breaking News - National - Breaking News

Labor has urged the federal government to expand the use of Australia's gas resources amid record oil prices and uncertainty about global energy supply.

Opposition resources spokesman Martin Ferguson was speaking during debate on changes to energy laws aimed at creating incentives for companies to build gas pipelines.

The changes include giving proponents of new gas pipelines exemption from third-party access to their infrastructure for the first 15 years of operation.

They will also give exemption from price regulations for proposed international transmission pipelines that deliver foreign gas to Australia.

Mr Ferguson supported the legislation but said the government had not gone far enough.

He said it needed to remove excessive regulation within the electricity and gas sector and expand the use of alternative energies to secure Australia's future supply.

"Natural gas is part of the answer to Australia's concerns about petrol prices and supply security," he said.

"People are worried about the Middle East and security of (oil) supply, and they're worried about the price of oil and its impact on their household budget.

"Without developing alternative fuel industries in Australia, we will ... increasingly be hostage to supplies from the Middle East, west Africa and Russia. We've got to do something ourselves."

Mr Ferguson has recently supported a change in Labor's policy opposing new uranium mines in Australia, sparking heated debate within the party.

He said Prime Minister John Howard wanted to debate the role of nuclear energy in Australia - a divisive topic within the Labor Party - but did not want to discuss alternative energy supplies.

"(The government) would sooner have a debate about nuclear power, which is a futuristic debate, rather than a debate on the base-load requirements and energy requirements of Australia at this very point in time," Mr Ferguson said.

"We've actually got to invest in making sure that if something goes wrong beyond Australia's shores in terms of access to oil ... we've got an alternative in place.

"The prime minister thinks it's commercial to (export) gas to Shanghai, well I think it's about time he started to think about getting gas to Darwin or Sydney or Melbourne."

Country Liberal MP David Tollner said tidal energy was emerging as a possible source of alternative energy, particularly in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Mr Tollner said the government's incentives to the energy sector would help the Papua New Guinea gas pipeline get off the ground.

© 2006 AAP