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ASHLYNNE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee. This is 7am.

One of Australia’s favourite shows has an interesting sponsor this year.

MasterChef, that show that delivers fairytale stories of home cooks rising to national celebrity, is this year being supported by the gas industry.

So, what does big gas want with MasterChef, and what are they paying for?

Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper Mike Seccombe, on the fight over the future of our kitchens and whether the gas industry can survive the next big elimination challenge.

It’s Thursday, May 9.

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ASHLYNNE:

Mike, do you watch the show MasterChef?

MIKE:

I'm sorry to say I rarely watch any cooking shows. And I never, never watch the ones that sort of presented as a competition. I actually enjoy cooking, but I don't like the histrionics of competition.

ASHLYNNE:

Fair enough. But you, regardless, have spent quite a bit of time looking into the show MasterChef Australia. Why is that?

MIKE:

Well, in a word, gas.

Audio excerpt – Masterchef Australia:

“Previously on Masterchef Australia… "

Audio excerpt – Host:

“Please welcome, MY MUM!”

Audio excerpt – Masterchef Australia:

“With dishes only a mother could love!”

Audio excerpt – Host:

“I’m getting PTSD thinking about this.”

MIKE:

MasterChef Australia has struck a major sponsorship deal for this year's series with Australian Gas Networks, or AGN, which owns and operates gas transmission and distribution pipelines to more than 1.3 million homes and businesses across eastern mainland Australia.

Audio excerpt – Chef:

“How do you have your steak?”

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“I'm a medium rare guy.”

Audio excerpt – Chef:

“I'm a rare.”

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“Right? Okay, cool.”

Audio excerpt – Chef:

“Even blue.”

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“We're cooking with Michael Weston, a former contestant on the TV show MasterChef.”

MIKE:

They've formed, or formed part of, what has been called an innovative brand integration. And the innovation is so-called renewable gas.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“It is all part of a plug for MasterChef's newest sponsor, a gas network company.”

Audio excerpt – Spokesperson:

“We are so excited about our partnership with MasterChef and showcasing that there is a renewable gas option for customers.”

Audio excerpt – Host:

“Welcome to the MasterChef kitchen.”

MIKE:

So this season, the show would be cooking, they said, firstly with biomethane in the kitchen, and then with hydrogen for a, and I'm quoting here, “barbecue challenge, taking the iconic Australian pastime to the next dimension”, unquote. There were also advertisements from AGN aired during MasterChef about how renewable gas is part of the big picture for Australia's energy transition.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“It shows contestants cooking with another renewable gas - biomethane - which is a by-product of waste processing.”

MIKE:

So this is all plugging the idea of cooking with low emissions, sustainable gases, which they say are good replacements for traditional, so-called natural gas, which is methane, which, you know, comes up out of the ground, which is a fossil fuel and which is very polluting. So they're suggesting that these will be an alternative. And Catherine MacArthur, the executive general manager, customer and strategy at AGN, stated in this big media release that, quoting again, “carbon neutral biomethane and hydrogen on MasterChef Australia shows that we can keep cooking the way we know and love with fewer emissions than natural gas”, which sounds great. The problem is, we can't actually do that. It's all a bit of fiction really.

ASHLYNNE:

So for those of us who get excited by cooking shows and then potentially... Not you, me. And then potentially get excited about using this environmentally friendly gas at home. Can we use the gas that we're saying in MasterChef?

MIKE:

No we cannot. On AGN Frequently Asked Questions page on the website it actually says this in black and white. And I'm quoting again, “renewable gas is not yet available for direct purchase by consumers in the retail market.” This to me looks like a classic example of, what they call in marketing, a bait and switch. You know, where they advertise one thing and actually sell you something quite different.

In this case, what they sell you is neither renewable nor carbon neutral. It's a fossil fuel. Biomethane, which probably won't be a familiar term to many. It's essentially chemically indistinguishable from the methane that comes up out of the ground. But it's produced differently. It's produced when organic matter decomposes. So, for example, you know, it leaks out of landfills, and waste treatment plants, and other... piggeries, other such places, and it needs to be captured on site. And it's a good thing that it's captured because it's a powerful greenhouse gas. But at the moment, what's usually done is when it's captured on site, it's burnt on site and turned into electricity and used straight away. What AGN and the other companies, these pipeline, gas pipeline companies, want to do is they want to harvest it and mix it in with regular old gas and pump it around the country to homes in that way. There isn't a lot of this going on, I must say at the moment. There's one small demonstration project in Australia that currently does that, at a sewage treatment plant in Malabar in Sydney, and it produces only enough gas each year to meet the needs of around 6,300 homes. That's out of, what, 5.1 million Australian homes connected to the gas network, so hardly anything. That actually is the source of the biomethane being used on MasterChef. MasterChef is filmed, I think, in Melbourne. So this was a special order from the Malabar sewage plant. As someone for the company that provided the gas said, essentially we bottled it up and then we shipped it down to Victoria so they could use it. The hydrogen used in MasterChef’s barbecue challenge is not emissions free either. The hydrogen used for this series, anyway, is what they call grey hydrogen, which means it's produced from methane, not from renewables like wind and solar. So, you know, if you want to have, you can have green hydrogen, but to get green hydrogen, you have to produce it using renewable energy. The MasterChef renewable gas website, linked to the show, blamed what they called scheduling conflicts, I have no idea what scheduling conflicts were, for the fact that they use this dirty gas, and they promised that the hydrogen would be green for next year's series of MasterChef, but would still be, it would still be a one off bespoke product that we're going to source it from the CSIRO. So, you know, once again, still not actually available to anyone watching at home.

ASHLYNNE:

Okay. We can't get it now. Will we be able to get it at any point in the future? Is it a viable product?

MIKE:

Well, probably not. Probably never. I spoke to Jono La Nauze, who's the chief executive of Environment Victoria, and he says it's extremely unlikely, those were his words, that either biomethane or hydrogen will ever be in a kitchen near you in the future. In the case of hydrogen, it's just incredibly inefficient. First you have to generate the electricity, you know, using wind or solar, and then you use that electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and then you transport the hydrogen atoms to the home, and then you have to convert it back into heat energy in your kitchen. And at every step of that process, you lose a whole lot of energy. I mean, it would be much more energy efficient if you just skipped all of that and went straight to electricity. If you just powered your kitchen with electricity in the first place, rather than went through all these intermediate steps. Furthermore, you would have to replace the entire gas pipe system, and then you would also have to replace all the appliances that burn them. And not only that, you would have to do it all at the same time. The logistical difficulties are just enormous. So hydrogen, unlikely ever to happen in the home. I mean, there are other good uses for hydrogen in industrial processes and stuff, but not in the home. Now, I should say there are some studies that suggest the gas network could run safely on a blend of up to about 20% hydrogen. In fact, the industry already is running several small pilot projects using a 10% blend, but that still leaves it a long way short of the carbon neutrality that they spruiking on MasterChef. And furthermore, in the case of biomethane, there's just not enough of it to make a big difference. At best, according to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, biomethane could make up only about 20% of the total pipeline gas market by 2050. Only then if its costs could come down significantly. So, you know, hydrogen, impossible. Biomethane, not practical. Here's the thing, this was put directly to the people behind the deal by the ABC's Emilia Terzon. You know, she actually asked Catherine MacArthur from the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group.

Audio excerpt – Amelia Turner:

“But their point is more it's commercially never going to work, right?”

Audio excerpt – Catherine MacArthur:

“Well I think renewable gases are still in their early stage…”

MIKE:

And so, you know, this leaves the big question here, which is why is the gas industry spending great amounts of money promoting a product on one of Australia's favourite TV shows, a product that doesn't exist and may never exist?

ASHLYNNE:

After the break, what the gas industry is trying to prevent happening to Australian kitchens.

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ASHLYNNE:

So Mike, we're talking about this MasterChef’s gas sponsorship deal, and I suppose the question is what does the gas industry really get out of this deal? Why are they doing it?

MIKE:

Well, to understand that, you have to look at what they are trying to prevent rather than what they're trying to sell. What they're trying to prevent is people moving away from gas for cooking and for heating their homes, and for heating the hot water in their homes. Last year, in Victoria, gas connections to new newly built homes were banned.

Audio excerpt – News Reporter:

“Some breaking news just through, that you two are gonna hate this, Victoria is reportedly going to today announce a statewide ban on all new gas connections to homes.”

Audio excerpt – Kyle Sandilands:

“Ugh. The Woke Victorian government!”

MIKE:

Which I might add led to uproar among the likes of Kyle Sandilands and others.

Audio excerpt – Kyle Sandilands:

“These laws are for idiots! You know, that government sucks ass. That wandering eyed flop down there.”

MIKE:

The Victorian opposition arked up to all claiming that it limited the individual right to choice, which I guess is true. The ACT has done the same, and this is a trend that's happening around the world, and for good reason. Sure, it limits people's choices, but, you know, so it is limiting the supply of cigarettes, for example, because gas cooktops are very bad for human health. Cooking on gas in your kitchen is roughly the same as having a passive smoker in the house, in terms of its health effects. It produces pollutants including nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, fine particulate matter that, all of these things have been linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer. At least 1 in 8 cases of childhood asthma is the result of cooking with gas in the home, according to multiple studies both here and overseas, and some studies say much hype and people around the world are waking up to this, as I mentioned. Last year in the United States, the National Consumer Product Safety Commission actually suggested it might ban gas cookers in new dwellings. Much as Victoria and the ACT have done here. And, gee, the right wing of politics over there fired up in a big way.

Audio excerpt – FOX News Reporter:

“Congressman ,good to see you. Can you walk us through why you are opposed to a potential ban on gas stoves.”

Audio excerpt – Ronny Jackson:

“Well Sean, it's a shame we’re wasting our time on this, to be honest. This is another example of government overreach for the Bidan administration.”

MIKE:

Ronnie Jackson, a Republican congressman from Texas, went on Twitter, as it was then, to say, and I'm quoting, “if the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry that from my cold dead hands”.

Audio excerpt – Ronny Jackson:

“They’ll say there’s some kind of science behind it that justifies that, there’s no valid legitimate science proves that or suggests that this kind of cooking is any more hazardous than any other type of cooking.”

MIKE:

So this has become kind of a frontline of the climate wars and for that matter, the culture wars.

Audio excerpt – Ronny Jackson:

“They’re using it as a political tool to push their green new deal and I just think it's pathetic that they’re doing this.”

MIKE:

The belief also persists, in some quarters, that gas cooking is superior to electric. You know, despite rebuttals from numerous top chefs, presumably not the ones going on MasterChef. But Neil Perry, for example, was on ABC TV again on Tuesday night, and he said, and I'll quote him. “I've been cooking on induction and electric since 2006. It's more powerful and much more reactive than what gas is. It's better for the environment. For me, it's a no brainer.” I spoke to Dan Cass, who with Saul Griffiths is the co-founder of Rewiring Australia, and he says this inevitable shift for sort of cheaper, cost saving electric appliances in homes presents an obvious existential threat to the gas distribution companies. As he said, I'm quoting him, “the gas pipeline companies are a regulated monopoly used to big profits and rightly terrified that electrification breaks their business model.”. He sees the MasterChef sponsorship through this lens. You know, he says, the deal is essentially a greenwashing campaign straight out of the climate denial playbook. You know, confuse and buy time to eke out another decade of profits from what will ultimately become stranded assets. That's his take on it.

ASHLYNNE:

So Mike, gas obviously still has a huge number of supporters in media and in politics. So, just how existential is the threat to the gas industry at the moment?

MIKE:

It's getting very, very pointy, actually. It's cheaper to electrify homes, both for the residents in them and for the construction firms. You know, you don't have to put in all the gas pipes as well as electric wires, you just have to put in the electric wires. I spoke to Steve Ford, who's the head of sustainability with a very big property company, GPT, which has like a $32.6 billion portfolio of retail, office and logistics properties across Australia, and they don't do gas at all anymore. He told me the last building they did that wasn't all electric was like in the late 20 teens, he said. And that was when it was finished. It was planned, you know, five years before then. So it's been roughly a decade since they've been, you know, considering gas as an option for their properties. It's not only the case at the top end of town, either. I mean, I spoke to Emma Chessell, who's a policy advocate with the Brotherhood of Saint Lawrence, and she says the shift away from gas is happening very fast at the household level as well. And she cited data from the Australian Energy Market Operator last year, which showed that gas used in Victorian homes was 14% lower in 2023 than it was in 2022, which, you know, is a big fall in just a single year. And it's particularly salient, I think, because this is Victoria, which is by far the biggest state for gas consumption in the country, or it was. In the case of Emma Chessell, the concern there is that the Brotherhood, of course, being concerned about about the people with the least, are concerned that as the smart people, the big money people get out of gas, there's going to be fewer and fewer people left in the network, and those people are going to wind up paying higher and higher prices. So the big transitional difficulty here is getting a measure of equity into it. So that's a problem yet to be fixed. But the big picture is absolutely clear. Gas coming piped into your home is on the way out.

ASHLYNNE:

So then, presumably as these gas companies get more and more desperate, as more and more people get off gas, we're going to see more of these kinds of product placements, and cleverly disguised ads. How do we, as consumers, pick through that and work out fact from fiction in all of this?

MIKE:

Well, you're right, it's a very hard thing to do. And it's a particularly hard thing to do, I think, given the current state of commercial television. I mean, clearly the Ten Network is struggling. You know, they will take money from any sponsor prepared to pay them, you know, as long as it's legal, I would suggest. Not only that, you know, this kind of product placement is infecting commercial television news to a greater and greater extent. The answer is a hard one. I think people just have to go to people who don't have a dog in this fight. If someone's paying for content in a particular media organisation, pretty good chance that someone's cutting corners a little bit or not quite giving you the full story. All I can say is, having looked into it thoroughly, having spoken to the people who really know their onions, best thing you can do is, get gas out of your life as quick as you can.

ASHLYNNE:

If you can afford it.

MIKE:

If you can afford it.

ASHLYNNE:

Mike, thanks so much for your time.

MIKE:

Thank you so much for having me.

ASHLYNNE:

And a little announcement from us here at 7am, we've launched our special series The Great Housing Disaster, which takes a deep dive into the housing crisis, in it’s own podcast feed. So if you haven’t listened, or want to send it to a friend, lookout for The Great Housing Disaster, wherever you get your podcasts.

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ASHLYNNE:

Also in the news today…

The Biden administration revealed yesterday that it paused an arms shipment to Israel for the first time, with reports the decision was made because of Israel’s plans to launch a full assault on the city of Rafah.

The shipment, which had been due to head to Israel last week, contained large payload bombs.

A senior official from the US government told reporters anonymously the Biden administration was now conducting a careful review of shipments, for weapons that quote, “might be used in Rafah”.

And,

In handing down the Victorian state budget yesterday, treasurer Tim Pallas has labelled intergenerational wealth inequality a “national tragedy”.

Pallas said that income taxes on the young, despite their relative lack of wealth, combined with tax breaks and increased spending on older Victorians represented “the greatest transfer of wealth from one generation to another, in the wrong direction.”

I’m Ashlynne McGhee, this is 7am. Thanks for listening. We will see you again tomorrow.

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