Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying before, we're in a massive climate crisis. We should be in this parliament debating bills to phase out coal and gas. Instead, we're here debating a bill that will make it easier for large gas corporations to get approvals for their massive gas projects—in particular Santos with their Barossa project.

We just saw the resource minister in question time give, frankly, one of the more bizarre answers to a question I've seen in this place. It focused, really quite a lot, on the length of court cases when it comes to groups opposing massive gas projects. She was talking about the idea that these court cases are going on for too long. Well, therein lies the point, because what has frustrated Santos, this large multinational gas corporation, is that it's taking too long, from their perspective, to get approval for their massive gas projects. It seems to me, from reading between the lines, that the intent is to speed up those court cases. What's clear is that the effect of this bill will be not only to speed up those cases and the approval time line but to make it easier and faster for Santos to get approval for the massive Barossa gas project. We now know, under a freedom of information request, that Santos wrote to the resource minister about exactly this point. We still have yet to have the government get up and explicitly rule out this making it easier for large gas corporations to get approval for large gas projects, and I think that's because they know in their hearts that this is exactly what this bill will do.

Again, we've been told by the International Energy Agency and basically every leading climate scientist in the world that if we want any chance of stopping climate change then there can be no new coal, oil or gas projects. Here we are debating a bill, the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Legislation Amendment (Safety and Other Measures) Bill 2024, that will make it more likely that in the future we will see approvals for massive gas projects like the Santos Barossa gas project—which, by the way, will release 80 per cent of Australia's 2022 emissions, over 400 million tonnes. I don't know how the government can justify this, and it would be interesting, I think, for them to go to members for the public who have been victims of climate change fuelled natural disasters and say their response to that is to open up more coal, oil and gas projects and pass laws, like the one we are debating right now, that will make it easier and faster for massive gas corporations like Santos to get approval for massive climate bombs like the Barossa gas project.

It might be one thing for the government to turn around and say, 'Oh, well, this will increase government revenue,' but it won't even do that, because the vast majority of the revenue generated out of these projects will go into shareholders' pockets and into the profit margins and revenue margins of gas corporations like Santos and Chevron. So what we have, in effect, is a bill that will allow for the opening up of massive new gas projects, driving the climate crisis and putting profits in the pockets of corporations like Santos, to no benefit to the public. What it will do is drive the climate crisis. The more gas projects are opened up and, in particular, the more methane and CO2 is released into the atmosphere, the more it will make the climate warmer and make floods, droughts and bushfires worse in the future—and heatwaves such as we've just experienced in Queensland and across the country as well.

I think the government should come here and justify why their policy is not only to keep opening up new coal, oil and gas but to make it easier than it was under the Morrison government to get approvals for massive gas projects. I've said this before and I'll say it again, future generations will look back on bills like this and ask, 'What was this government doing?' When we're being smashed with future climate fuelled natural disasters—I say 'natural disasters', but I should say 'fossil fuelled disasters': more floods, more bushfires and more heatwaves—members of the public will rightly ask, 'Well, why did the government keep pouring fuel on the fire by allowing for the opening of new gas projects, new coal projects and new oil projects?' The government should be deeply ashamed of this bill.

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