Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the federal coalition I rise today to speak on the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Legislation Amendment (Safety and Other Measures) Bill 2024. In doing so, I'm proud to affirm to the House that on this side of the chamber the coalition continues to be a strong, dependable and ardent supporter of Australia's resources sector. On this side we remain committed to ensuring that this crucial industry, which generates and delivers so much wealth, is able to keep investing in our nation.

It's worth recognising just how important that contribution is. In 2022 and 2023 Australia's gas industry generated approximately $92 billion in export earnings, which provided direct economic support to federal, state and territory budgets. Australian gas also powers energy and manufacturing across our country and provides affordable energy security to our international partners. Therefore, if these sorts of projects continue to be threatened, we jeopardise billions and billions of dollars worth of investment and run the risk of not being able to supply the international market with the vital energy supplies it needs. Further to this, Australia is set to hit a gas supply cliff by 2026, and with continued attacks on the gas sector we run the risk of not being able to encourage, to facilitate and to secure the substantial investment our country requires to avert this crisis. Therefore sensible government policy which supports the resources industry, which incentivises investment and which will help develop greater prosperity of this sector and the whole nation is so desperately needed at this time.

But this is not what we're seeing from this government. The circulation of an amendment attempting to restrict sensible reforms to offshore regulations is an attempt to appease the Greens. These amendments add a new EPBC trigger into the decision-making process, which would completely remove the EPBC exemption for offshore products if the minister for the environment decides they don't like a particular offshore gas regulation. And by adding the sunset clause into these amendments the government has assured that when they inevitably bungle the regulation reform there'll be no chance to fix it. We're going through this entire process right now because of provisions to fix regulations that simply don't exist. Why would the government then move an amendment to remove those exact provisions, which we are voting on right now?

We will be opposing this amendment to this bill. And it is telling that, despite the government having bipartisan support from the coalition for this bill in its original form, when Mr Bandt said 'jump', Labor couldn't help itself from watering down those parts of the bill—important reforms—whilst running scared of the radicals who want to shut the industry down.

Because we want to continue to see a government that puts good policy before politics, especially if it means cooperating with the coalition, this bill has bipartisan support. Labor had no need to crumble to the Greens pressure—yet they did. It begs the question: why do they always slap away the hand of bipartisanship in favour of bowing to the Greens' agenda? This is indicative of the type of government the Prime Minister leads. Labor will go to the media and plead the bipartisanship thing, or attack the coalition for not blindly supporting them in their legislative agenda. But when the opportunity for real bipartisanship presents itself, Labor cannot help themselves. Instead of continuing to work with the coalition, whose support Labor had already secured, they folded to the Greens. Yet again, it's the Greens' tail wagging the Labor dog. When will Labor end the charade and just offer Mr Bandt a position in their cabinet, because he's obviously already there writing their policies. Despite all of the posturing by Labor and all that they do to support the resources sector—

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