John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I am really quite pleased to take note of this report. It is an excellent piece of work, on an important piece of legislation, referred to us by the minister on 18 June. As a committee we beavered away at it, completing our report by August—a pretty short time line. I think it is good that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Primary Industries and Resources has been utilised in this way. I think it is an efficient use of committee resources, particularly on legislation as technical as this can be. We had a debate earlier in the day on a previous offshore petroleum bill which is highly technical, so to utilise a committee in a way that can broaden consultation with all the key players is very useful.

In fact, the member for Moreton made reference to the fact that this is not usual procedure, particularly for the House of Representatives. I am grateful to the Clerk for providing me with evidence that, over the last 13 years, there have only been nine occasions when legislation has been directly referred to a House committee, and the last one was on 20 April 2000. In the Senate, of course, it is regular practice to refer legislation to committees, and I think it is an excellent opportunity for the House committees to be utilised in a very constructive way.

Very often we beaver away on an inquiry on a matter of incredible public importance and we collect evidence over a long period—12 or 18 months. We pour our hearts and souls into the report, we submit it to the parliament and then we wait for too long a period to get a response. But this one was short and sweet, and I think we would like to see a lot more of that more strategic use of parliamentary committees. Sometimes I think it is a great shame that the public do not see the hard work of committees as they go about their business in the national interest in a non-partisan way. In fact, the public, particularly the media, focus on that short 1½ hours of theatre every day in question time and do not see the real productive capacity of a parliament. Committees are made up of people with a range of expertise and they can make an important contribution.

This particular legislation, the draft Offshore Petroleum Amendment (Greenhouse Gas Storage) Bill 2008, is quite sensitive, as indicated by the enormous interest that was shown in it as the committee collected evidence. There are 19 recommendations, a fact that other members have made reference to. In the short time allocated for this discussion, it is not possible to refer to all of them but, of the 19 recommendations, there are four that I would particularly like to make reference to. One was quite clearly the challenge of the co-existence of future petroleum interests associated with greenhouse gas storage and sequestration in the same licensed area, if you like. It is particularly relevant in the Victorian location offshore from Gippsland because of the close proximity of the potential storage resources and a very high emission electricity industry out of the Victorian brown coal industry. It was a particularly challenging inquiry to take into account all of those interests. I might come back to some of these issues shortly.

The second recommendation is the need for confidence in this industry. The member for Moreton made some reference to that. We are talking about substantial capital investment—huge—measured in billions of dollars, so the potential players in this market need absolute certainty. I am fairly convinced that the provisions of this legislation will not be necessary for some time yet, but I think at this early stage it is very strategic that the bill has been introduced to give some certainty in the long planning process that is going to be involved in getting offshore sequestration up and operating.

The committee noted that there are examples all around the world, but again it is still a very new science and there is no ‘one site fits all’ example because of the geological vagaries in the way the earth’s crust was created. It will be an enormous challenge for industry, particularly in a commercial sense, to be confident that what they are doing is in the long-term interest and provides storage security.

That then led us to consideration of the evidence on the issue of long-term liability. We are talking about the sequestration of carbon into geological formations over a long period of time, which could be 30 or even 50 years, and then the longevity continues beyond that, perhaps for hundreds of years or even thousands. We had to consider all of the uncertainties of the earth’s crust. I mean, it moves. So the question is how to manage the ongoing liability while still maintaining the common-law responsibility of those people injecting the carbon so that they do the right thing, invest in the right sort of technology and take every precaution.

An interesting issue which the committee dwelt on towards the end of the inquiry, which came out of some of the evidence, was the need to have a public awareness program to make sure that the public completely understand what carbon sequestration is—that is, injecting carbon dioxide into the earth’s crust. There is some perception around that this is a noxious gas. It is not. Carbon monoxide is dangerous to human beings in an immediate health sense but carbon dioxide is not. It is a dangerous gas, as we now know, as advised by the world scientific community, in terms of its impact on the environment, but we need to make sure that people understand that this is, in an immediate sense, a safe gas. It is important that people make the distinction and understand the long-term reasons for it to be sequestered so deep down in the earth.

The committee was charged with the responsibility to asses this new legislation because it sets up a very important framework for the introduction of greenhouse gas geological storage. This is a very important piece of legislation. As I have said, it is quite timely in order to provide the opportunity for the long-term planning that has to be associated with that. The bill we discussed earlier today was about petroleum licences and the need to make sure that there is consistency in the way that licences are allocated all around the globe, which is an orb. We touched on the challenge of surveying an orb with a curved surface and the fact that these operations, whether we are talking about sequestration or the extraction of oil and gas, are operating in a concentric environment. As I tried to explain earlier, it is like a keystone with tapered edges as it comes into the centre of the earth. It has a curved surface, so the surveying challenges are fairly intense. The legislation that we debated earlier today is important because we are going to have to have absolute accuracy as the provisions of the carbon sequestration bill which the committee considered come into play. There is an enormous concern out there about resource security for the petroleum extraction industry and the protection of the huge investment they have made. There is also concern about the concept that within the same licence area there is the possibility of an exhausted gas field being used for the sequestration of carbon.

I found the inquiry quite challenging and quite exciting. I would like to commend the committee. We are a good, hardworking committee. We are chaired by the member for Lyons. We are a committee composed of all of the parties, including the Independents. We have a reputation for pursuing matters in the national interest and avoiding any partisanship. This is an excellent report. The title, Down under, makes it very much Australian. As the member for Moreton made reference to, we are leading the world with the introduction of this legislation. In that sense we will be at the coalface, if you like, in getting this right. I do not think we are there yet. I will be very keen to see what the minister does with the 19 recommendations that the report makes.

We are in an area of science and geological pursuit where there are enormous unknowns. But the Australian way is to take on challenges like that. The committee have worked hard to assist the parliament to make sure that we get it right. We have consulted widely and heard the views of a wide range of players and the public as well. At the end of the day it is about creating an environment where there is absolute resource security so that the players know and understand at an early stage what is involved before they start making their plans. It will involve multimillions of dollars and, without doubt, the interests of players who are outside Australia as well. I am pleased to take note of this report. I commend the committee for the great work that we have done together. I look forward to the ongoing improvement of this bill to make sure that the things that we have set out to tackle are in fact secured.

See this speech in context