Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis has slammed the Victorian Liberal Opposition for backing a ban on onshore gas exploration, despite refusing to criticise a scare campaign on the same issue by the Labor Party in NSW.

Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy has seized on an Auditor-General’s report warning his state’s regulatory framework was ill-equipped to deal with an onshore gas industry to call for a moratorium to be extended until 2020.

“The findings of the Auditor-General support our view that the case for an expansion of the commercial unconventional gas industry in Victoria has not been made,” Guy said.

That state’s Labor Government has said it would await the results of an independent parliamentary inquiry before making a decision.

Koutsantonis took to social media this week to berate the Victorian Opposition Leader, calling the ban “economic vandalism” and tweeting that “SA is now the only welcoming jurisdiction for oil and gas investment supplying the Australian east coast markets”.

However, in March this year he refused to buy into the fracking debate when his Labor colleagues in New South Wales launched a series of ads designed to arouse community uncertainty about coal seam gas exploration, saying it was none of his business because “we don’t have coal seam gas in SA”.

He told InDaily he was reluctant to buy into the issue at the time because NSW was in the middle of a state election campaign, which Labor lost.

“I was disappointed with what the NSW Labor Opposition said about unconventional gas, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to insert myself into a general election,” he said.

“Matthew Guy has basically ruled out, regardless of any parliamentary evidence, ever allowing onshore exploration of unconventional gas … it’s an intellectually dishonest policy position to take, particularly in a state which shares a (gas) pipeline with SA.

“If you’re uncertain about unconventional gas, why rule it out forever? I think that’s vandalism.”

He said while SA had positioned itself to capitalise on the eastern states’ political reluctance to embrace fracking, he nonetheless wanted other states to develop their onshore gas industries, which he called “a natural endowment” to be used “as a nation-building aspiration”.

“We’ll play our part but the truth is I want to see NSW and Victoria get their own gas out of the ground,” he said, saying that would facilitate cheaper energy for consumers.