Australia

Question for locals: do you need gas connections?

Opinions on this are going to differ a lot.
I really like cooking on gas, but acknowledge it wastes a useful resource, is environmentally bad and potentially harmful to my families health.

Side question: do you have fireplaces, gas or otherwise?

It's becoming less common.
My last house, we had an internal combustion (wood) heater as the primary form of heating.
I know several people who have gas powered whole house ducted heating.
Both of these things are becoming prohibitively expensive to run compared to decent reverse cycle (heat pump) split systems.

Like everything, there's more layers than an onion to this.
Older houses had decent insulation as heating and cooling were hard.
Houses built from the 70s on have shit insulation, as running a heater or cooler year round were cheap and easy.

Back in the 00s, the federal government tried to kill 2 bids with one stone here - stimulate the economy whilst improving the insulation of most houses through what became known as the "Pink Bats" program
This itself become massively controversial as the program was rorted to hell, and even some deaths, leading to a royal commision.

The whole "ban new installs of gas" is a bit of a Green initiative, but it's becoming more common across the country, starting with Australian Capital Territory, which banned it in June.