The only certainty provided by the government's domestic shambolic gas reservation policy is that there will be no certainty.  

After 12 months of consulting with the industry, the Albanese Government has announced a gas reservation policy without any data, or a plan to support it, as demonstrated by the responsible Department during Senate estimates.

State and territory governments, manufacturers, and gas producers and exporters were surprised by the policy announcement on the same day as the Senate Select Committee into the gas tax delivered its report.

Both domestic and exporting gas companies have been left confused by conflicting advice from ministers as to the potential impact it will have on their business plans and bottom lines; state and territory governments have been left in the dark without any consultation on a change that impacts their royalties, and their own state-based reservations; and it's unclear if the reservation policy itself stacks up under our Constitution.

The policy framework released for consultation this week includes a percentage of gas required to be reserved with no reference to Australian gas production, export data and domestic use data. There is no reference to domestic gas tenures in Queensland. The relatively quick implementation date does not include an infrastructure pathway to move the gas from distant export LNG facilities around the country to where it's actually needed.

That means the reservation policy is due to start in 2027, but there are no pipelines or terminals or transport infrastructure, nor even a construction roadmap for these things, in order to align with that rapidly-approaching implementation date.

When asked at Senate estimates this week, officials from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water could not answer the simplest of data questions without offering to Google the answers.

When I asked the number of petajoules this 20% gas reservation policy would deliver into the domestic market, I was told that figure was still being considered.

I also asked about the petajoule amount of gas exported. The answer I received was for east coast exports in petajoules, west coast exports in tonnes; there was no aggregate sum, and officials were scrambling to find a conversion rate to be able to add the different regions together.

And when I asked these officials if they were able to identify the aggregate figure in petajoules - by identifying how many petajoules are in a ton - they resorted to Google to answer.

The Department has advised the Albanese government on a massive market intervention, which will affect our trading partners and our domestic gas producers, and shockingly, they were googling their answers. 

Surely, given the significant amount of gas being forced into the market, knowing the impact it will have on the Australian domestic price would be worthy of the most basic research.

It's no wonder that this provides zero confidence to Australian or overseas investors in our crucial gas industry - that this haphazard policy was decided politically, and not on a genuine needs basis.

At best, the policy will be unnecessary, without lowering domestic gas prices and not factoring in the 2029-2030 delayed timeframe by the Australian Energy Market Operator about east coast shortages; and at worst, it will destroy investment.

The proposed scheme definitely isn't without risk.

If rushed, or poorly implemented, it is going to wipe out smaller Australian domestic producers in the places where we need them the most. 

Victoria and New South Wales are the places which are feeling the worst gas shortages as a result of their own state government policy settings. That's where gas is truly needed.

This domestic reservation does not account for the lack of investment into new pipeline infrastructure.

And, we desperately need to be competitive for investment in gas, but right now, gas investments are going to places like Canada, the United States, Argentina, and other countries because of their attractive and stable policy settings.

A recent report from Wood Mackenzie found that Australia is now attracting only a 15% share of the investment portfolio of major international oil companies, down from 40% just over a decade ago.

All this reservation policy does is send further mixed messaging to those investors potentially wanting to unlock Australia's resources, because this government has been tinkering with settings in an ad hoc manner over the last few years - with little result.

I do not want any potential investment into Australia drying up at this crucial time. 

Because right now is when Australia needs more gas supply here, and more investments and new projects and the associated jobs, to deliver it well into the future.

Labor should implement supplementary policies to achieve investment, and attract it - including regular offshore acreage releases. Labour's failures to date on gas give no confidence that this scheme will be delivered well.

The risk is that we drive long-term investment offshore, shut down Australia's smaller gas businesses and not even lower the price of domestic gas.

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Susan McDonald is a Senator for Queensland, and the Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia.