Deep divisions in gas inquiry can inform future policymaking

A UQ Gas & Energy Transition Research Centre analysis of submissions to the 2024 Future Gas Strategy has identified distinct stakeholder narratives that are shaping Australia’s gas transition debate, as well as deep divisions over government decision-making.

The study involved researchers analysing 244 public submissions to the Federal Government’s Future Gas Strategy consultation, alongside media reporting and public commentary, to develop a narrative-based framework for understanding how stakeholders interpret energy policy decisions.

The study found stakeholder positions extended beyond simple ‘pro-gas’ and ‘anti-gas’ labels and instead centred around four contested ‘stakeholder clusters’. These included:

• Value-driven opponents who assess gas primarily in terms of climate irreversibility and cultural protection, rendering transitional roles unacceptable.
• Risk-driven opponents who focus on burden-shifting and distributive fairness, making their support conditional on sequencing and safeguards.
• Benefit-conditional supporters who prioritise affordability, industrial continuity, and regional stability and respond to credible transition roadmaps.
• Interest-aligned supporters who emphasise regulatory predictability and integrated system modelling.

Lead author Dr Debashish Dev said the analysis shows many energy transition disputes reflect fundamental conflicts over how governments should formulate policy.

“Different stakeholder groups are effectively operating from different sets of logic about what constitutes a fair and legitimate energy transition,” Dr Dev said.

“That logic is ultimately influencing how stakeholders interpret the risks, policy decisions and even the credibility of evidence itself.”

“In the Future Gas Strategy, these narratives were most evident in divisions over three areas: the acceptable duration of gas use; the distribution of transition burdens; and the legitimacy of decision-making processes."

However, the study also identified several areas where there was partial or complete alignment amongst the different stakeholder groups.

“Across all groups, procedural trust deficits emerged as a cross-cutting issue, particularly concerning diverse modelling assumptions that are difficult to follow through for a non-technical audience and limited feedback loops.”

“Notably, partial convergence appeared around restricting gas to high-value, hard-to-electrify applications, suggesting potential alignment space can be achieved despite broader disagreement.”

A valuable tool for policymakers

Dr Dev says the framework can help policymakers anticipate reactions, strengthen procedural legitimacy, and support more credible transition pathways and policy design based on potential alignments.
 

“They can also anchor the policy discussion around areas of shared concern and work through partial alignments from a governance, benefit-burden sequencing, and trust-building perspective.

“For instance, ‘Risk-driven opponents’, which includes certain community groups, are usually concerned about burden-shifting and balanced environmental protections.

“These groups may oppose policies but they are also open to compromise where decisions are made within a fair, clearly communicated and time-limited framework.

“They can be engaged with productively by sharing impact assessments, modelling assumptions, and embedding safeguards and sunset clauses.

“Alternatively, those with positions anchored in existential claims – the ‘value-driven opponents’ in our study - are less flexible but can still be productively engaged with approaches centred on early communication, independent monitoring, and trusted intermediaries.”

The findings are detailed in the paper A Narrative-Based Framework for Energy-Transition Consultations: Insights from Australia’s Future Gas Strategy (https://doi.org/10.1071/EP25219).