Nationals MP hails Narrabri gas project as win for community despite vocal opposition

The Nationals frontbencher Mark Coulton has declared the controversial Narrabri gas project is a winner for his community, despite continuing opposition from landholders, environmentalists and Indigenous traditional owners.

With coal seam gas development a divisive issue in regional Australia, the National Farmers Federation last week warned the Morrison government to tread carefully with its much-vaunted “gas-led recovery” after the coronavirus pandemic. NFF affiliate NSW Farmers has voiced its opposition to the Narrabri gas project.

Despite vocal objections from the National party’s core constituency, Coulton, who is the minister for regional health, regional communications and local government, and the member for Parkes – the electorate where the coal seam gas proposal is located – insisted the Santos project would “be beneficial for not just Narrabri, but the entire country”.

“This approval is good news for the local Narrabri community, which will benefit from the job opportunities the project will create,” he told Guardian Australia.

Coulton said the gas project, in conjunction with the “transformational inland rail” would give Narrabri the potential to be “one of our significant manufacturing hubs”.

Related: Narrabri gas project: do we need it and what's at stake for Australia's environment?

He said he expected the proponents to “adhere to the conditions of approval, which have been informed by extensive consultation and thorough input from scientific experts” but he suggested farmers were wrong to push back.

“It is my belief that the project can co-exist with agriculture in the north-west [of NSW] while providing the local economy a vital boost.”

Coulton’s stout defence of the Narrabri project came as the prime minister on Thursday stepped around a question about how much the “gas-led recovery” would cost taxpayers, and whether the government had modelled the impact of a significant gas expansion on his government’s climate change policy commitments.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Morrison said the government has set a “clear direction” – there needed to be more gas extracted and made available as a transitional fuel in the energy market and as a feedstock for manufacturing.

He said the government had already outlined some costs in terms of taxpayer investments and was still waiting to see what the private sector would do.

Despite pressuring Labor in the past to calculate the costs of its climate and energy policies, the prime minister appeared to suggest that the degree of uncertainty about what might be required made it difficult to quantify the costs of his own energy policy undertaking.

“There will be plenty of models that make all sorts of punts,” Morrison said. “Those models I think will struggle in the current environment to make a lot of sense.”

With the budget due next week, the government has been talking up the importance of gas for Australia’s economic recovery from the coronavirus.

While the gas push was crafted in part by the Coalition’s business advisers, and business has largely welcomed the government’s signalling about increasing the supply of gas for domestic use, the politically influential NFF will lobby the government to make sure the plan does not involve a significant expansion of coal seam gas projects.

The Narrabri project was ticked this week, with the NSW Independent Planning Commission giving what it described as “phased approval” of the $3.6bn development. But the project remains highly contentious with local farmers, conservationists and Indigenous traditional owners.

The NFF’s chief executive, Tony Mahar, told Guardian Australia last week that “farmers should have a choice in determining his or her own priority with how private land is used through a respectful and transparent process”.

“Farmers have and will continue to advocate that any extractive development must not impede on quality of agricultural resource, whether land or water,” Mahar said.

The need for new gas fields is contested. Morrison has quoted a gas industry estimate that 225,000 manufacturing jobs are in industries that used a lot of gas and need a cheap, reliable supply. But an upcoming report by the Grattan Institute challenges this, finding there were only between 4,000 and 5,000 manufacturing jobs heavily reliant on gas on the east coast.

Related: Morrison rebukes NSW environment minister for calling Narrabri gas project a 'gamble'

The NSW energy and environment minister, Matt Kean, this week told the Coalition for Conservation that the business case for gas was “on the clock”, and that while it may be useful in the short term, the economics were questionable because gas was a “hugely expensive” way of generating electricity. He said it would be sensible to move towards cheaper ways of delivering energy. His comments drew a rebuke from the prime minister.

While gas is said to have about half the emissions of coal, studies have suggested its impact may be greater due to leakage of methane, which is a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

Activist shareholder group the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility urged investors in Santos to intervene to halt the development before an investment decision was due late next year. It said Narrabri would put Australia’s commitment to the Paris agreement at risk, and the high cost of production at the site was likely to lead to the development becoming a stranded asset as the world increasingly valued zero emissions goods.

In April, 43% of Santos shareholders backed a motion calling on the company to support climate targets in line with the goals agreed in Paris in 2015.

Dan Gocher, the centre’s director of climate and environment, said: “Climate-aware investors now have a role to play in ensuring shareholders’ money is not spent on activities that go against the interests of local communities and a safe climate.”