Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

A number of years ago I was working for a company called Woodside Energy, and at that time one of our main assets was in the West African nation of Mauritania, an impoverished nation on the West African coast where oil had never been looked for. At the time when the company for which I was then working began looking for oil, the global oil price was between $10 and $12.50 a barrel—if that seems plausible today. Oil had never been found. There was great exploration risk and great country risk. The fiscal terms in the contract that was eventually concluded reflected both international norms and the risk inherent in that country.

In 2001 a very fortunate and significant discovery was made. That discovery meant that massive mineral wealth from oil was available to that country. What was required was the creation of a regulatory, permit based regime with environmental standards, all supported by international norms and standards. The World Bank, the IMF and the European Union were engaged, along with industry funding, to create a regulatory regime that was world’s best practice. Most importantly, the great principle of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative was put into place to require that all government revenues from the oil industry were publicly and transparently disclosed. This is a principle that underpins the oil industry in East Timor. The company for which I worked took this principle into Kenya, in East Africa—not an easy environment—and into Libya, in North Africa.

I note that a number of weeks ago there was an article in the Melbourne Age that reflected very poorly both on me and on employees of that company for the role that we played in bringing about the industrialisation and the development of the oil sector in that country. When asked by a journalist whether or not my company went by the book in this West African nation, I said that going ‘by the book’ in West Africa normally meant being corrupt. But we wrote a new book. We had to create a new book and we did that with the IMF, the World Bank and the European Union all working with us.

We did that also with magnificent support from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the then Australian government, and the support of the then Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Alexander Downer. We had on board at that time an outstanding employee, Brendan Augustin. Brendan is a diplomat of significant status and standing and he earned himself great credit for being the person who argued the hardest and the toughest to get the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in place in that West African nation. Unfortunately, in the last two years there have been two coups in that nation—two significant changes of government—but the principles that we established to make sure a transparent oil regime is in place are there today thanks to Brendan.

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