Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

That is one of many decisions that the department makes. I think it has been made without reference to me. I am not blaming them. Most of the decisions, in fact, are dealt with in that way. I am aware that they have been working alongside Woodside. They are very aware, as a company, of not only the issues relating to turtles but also a range of other issues that affect their operations in the north-west. They are very cognisant of those. I regard Woodside as one of the exceptionally well-behaved corporate entities in this country who care very deeply about Australia’s unique environment and our heritage. My department works very closely with them.

For all Australians who would like to see Australia’s energy resources developed—particularly those in the north-west, where we have abundant supplies of gas, which has a phenomenal capability to transform the way the world produces energy in terms of greenhouse gas emissions—and who care deeply about the future of the globe and the impact that massive increases in greenhouse gases could have on the climate, one of the truly transformational things we can do is to supplant the coal and oil that is burnt in places like China and North America and in other rapidly growing economies such as Korea and Japan with gas from the North West Shelf. Depending on what you are replacing—whether it is coal or oil—and on how dirty the oil is, you get a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent for the same amount of energy created by using gas from the North West Shelf. So there is a phenomenal environmental advantage in developing those abundant resources of gas off our North West Shelf and exporting them to the world and replacing coal and oil burning facilities. It is one of the great contributions of Australia—