Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek to leave to move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the question for the second reading of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Legislation Amendment (Safety and Other Measures) Bill 2024 being put to the House for decision only when the Government's the Government's amendments to the bill have been considered by a Senate inquiry.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the question for the second reading of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Legislation Amendment (Safety and Other Measures) Bill 2024 being put to the House for decision only when the Government's the Government's amendments to the bill have been considered by a Senate inquiry.

We heard, very eloquently set out by the last speaker, about how rushed the consultation process surrounding this bill was. Of course, the bill is coming through primarily as a worker safety bill. Most people, and I presume many of the members of the caucus, would have been told that this is a worker safety bill. What is actually happening is buried in this bill in one schedule, and this one schedule is the one that is causing great consternation amongst traditional owners, amongst the environment movement, amongst the climate movement and among most of us here on the crossbench. What it does is effectively give the Minister for Resources the power to completely alter and remove the rights that First Nations people have to be consulted on these projects and, further to that, effectively allow a carve out of these projects from key environmental protections.

In other words, under this bill, if the resources minister says that the provisions of the EPBC Act and the consultation provisions are not to apply then that's what happens. At the moment there's a requirement under the 2014 plan which sets out comprehensive albeit very inadequate requirements for consultation—it's Tony Abbott era stuff—which a full Federal Court has found to be workable. Under this bill that has been put forward, the resources minister is able to say, 'Well, they just don't apply.'

The government have been called out on this dirty deal with the Liberals that they are trying to sneak through as one short schedule to a bill that has nothing to do with it—it's about work and safety. They've been called out. We got a Senate inquiry up into this. The coalition and Labor together did another dirty deal and graciously allowed a half-day Senate inquiry where hardly anyone had time to come up and give evidence. But what we did discover through that Senate inquiry was a great deal of consternation from traditional owners, climate groups, environment groups and, indeed, unions, who said: 'Hang on! This bit in the bill should not go ahead. It's not what the bill is about.' The government has said that they have got amendments that they are going to perhaps respond to some of that with. After being called out, the first reaction of the government was to say: 'No, you've got it wrong. You've got it completely wrong. All of those groups who have come up—the ACF, the Environmental Defenders Office, the lawyers and everyone who has looked at it—have all got it completely wrong. It doesn't do that.'

Then they jumped to the next step and said: 'Well, maybe there's something in what you say. So what we'll do is use a fig leaf to put it through—pass some amendments.' I thank the government for the briefing on those amendments, but what we need to know is whether those amendments do what the government says they will do or whether they are just like the first bill, where, in fact, the government says one thing—'Just trust us'—but, as soon as you put the microscope on it, it becomes crystal clear that the amendments dissolve and the law dissolves. What becomes clear is that this is all about ramming through and fast-tracking gas projects and taking away First Nations voices.

It is vital that we have the chance to examine amendments that the government says are going to fix some of these problems. I don't think they will, because the whole point of this bill is to respond to Santos's concerns. Santos raised concerns and said: 'Traditional owners are winning too many court cases. Those court cases are saying that they've got rights and that they're to be consulted. We need to get around that.' They wrote a letter to the resources minister. Santos said, 'Jump,' and Labor said, 'How high?' and they came in with this legislation.

I don't see how you can move amendments to that that are consistent and that are in keeping with what the government wants to be the original purpose of this—namely, to circumvent that and deal with Santos's objection, which is, of course, that they didn't think that the First Nations people should have succeeded in court. Remember that Santos itself, when it went to the full Federal Court, said, 'We don't think we have to consult at all.' The government said, 'Firstly, here's this really broadbrush piece of legislation that has zero detail in it, but just trust us because we're going to issue new consultation requirements—they'll be okay,' even though we know they're doing it because Santos asked for them to be weakened.

Then you apply a bit of interrogation to that and put a bit of sunlight on that and that falls apart. They briefed it out to the media this morning, saying: 'No, it's okay. We've worked up amendments that apparently deal with some of the problems.' Notably, one of the articles references the government as saying, 'We think these are amendments the industry is going to be happy with.' That should tell you everything about it; they probably wrote them. But, if they do those things, given how significant this bill is and given what the government says is the purpose of the amendments, let's test them. Let's send the bill to an inquiry to test whether it does what they say it's going to do. If it goes to the inquiry, we will be able to hear from the likes of the Climate Council, who came to the last inquiry and said this—and I'm talking specifically about the question of proposed amendments to the government's bill and why we need to have further scrutiny of those:

On this basis, the Climate Council's strong preference would be to see this section removed from the bill in its entirety.

That's the section that has this rogue schedule in it that's about removing consultation rights and undermining the EPBC Act, which has absolutely zero to do with workers' safety. They went on to say:

However, if this section is to proceed for further consideration by the Parliament, Climate Council calls for it to be significantly re-drafted to clarify that:

They went on to say:

Adopting these amendments would provide some assurance that the bill is not seeking to weaken the OPGSS project assessment regime in order to give major proposed offshore gas projects quicker and easier passage through it.

That's the Climate Council talking about the climate components of it, as opposed to the First Nations component of it, but the point they raise is a valid one. If it's doing what the government says, are there going to be amendments to that effect? If there are going to be amendments to that effect, then they've got to follow certain principles. We know now, from the rushed process that this bill has gone through, that we cannot just take the government's word that the amendments that they bring will do the job.

We've seen legislation brought in where, at first, the government said it didn't do what we claimed it would. Then they're turning around and introducing their own amendments, by way of admission. But now what we've got to work out is: if these amendments are going to come, do they do what the government says they're going to do? We've only had half a day of Senate inquiry into this significant bill. What we're proposing is that, given the significance of the further amendments that the government want to bring—which they have foreshadowed in the media—they also need to be considered by a Senate inquiry. This is a sensible motion that I hope the government will consider supporting. Having any proposed amendments examined by a Senate inquiry would allow people to have confidence about what the government's legislation will actually do. (Time expired)

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