He said Australia was enjoying a strong economy both with a robust agricultural sector and its role as an energy superpower, but as with all seismic shifts that have come with the financial transformation of recent decades there have been unintended consequences, and the oil patch had become prosperous, expensive and complacent.

More recently, the energy business had faced opposition from a "well-coordinated, well-funded, misleading and often dishonest" political campaign that had lead to an erosion of public sentiment and cracks in the state and Commonwealth parliaments' bipartisan approach to resource development.

"Managing these unintended consequences cannot be achieved by concentrating our efforts in Canberra," Smith said.

The oil patch needs to bring the electorate along with it, and to do that it needs to demonstrate its value to society.

He said the riches provided for regional Victoria from the gold rush era were being conferred on rural Queensland, and could be shared with northern Australia, but for the gas boom to really take hold, Australia needs to address the fact that working in remote areas is expensive, something that has hurt the next generation of investment.

"Australia should always aspire to have the best paid workers in the world, but this is only sustainable if we have the world's most productive workers as well," he said.

He said high wages continue to be a major challenge, and where there are disadvantages in geography, it needed to be balanced by costs, or investment will go elsewhere, because somewhere like Canada is around 30% cheaper than Australia.

He said nationally significant projects need wage growth agreed over the life of the development, to give resource companies the certainty to invest over time.

Companies also need to feel welcome, and while he said they were not being "run out of town", forces were at work to hem in further development, and industry had been too quiet for too long, allowing demonisation to run rampant.

Communities need to know that their prosperity is not a given without resource development, and this needs to be communicated in areas from the Great Australian Bight to the Hunter Valley and Gippsland Basin, so that job growth can be allowed to continue.

And he said industry needs to address head on the role it has to play in a carbon-constrained world, and it must face the activists head on, by opening a dialogue with those who oppose the industry, and who have been allowed to run the debate.

He said that oil and gas needs to evolve to meet the exponential demand growth for energy, while also seeking net-zero CO2 emissions.

"Renewable energy sources will play an increasing role in the energy mix, but to be successful will need to partner with lower carbon oil and gas, but also partner with renewables to provide the full range of energy products," Smith said.

It was not something that everyone had accepted, but people had also accepted the theme that 100% renewables was viable.

He also found it absurd that a nation as rich in natural gas as Australia persisted in burning brown coal for electricity generation.

"Surely investment in gas generated electricity provides a tangible and achievable path toward

a reduction in carbon emissions - and an improvement in air quality," he said.

"After all, gas produces half the carbon dioxide and just one-tenth of the air pollutants when burnt to produce electricity."

He said Victoria's moratorium was stopping the state cutting its lignite addiction, and helping farmers gain extra income, as they had in Queensland.