Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I present the 12th report of 2008 of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills. I also lay on the table Scrutiny of Bills Alert Digest No. 12 of 2008, dated 12 November 2008.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I seek leave to have the tabling statement incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

In tabling the committee’s Alert Digest No. 12 of 2008 and Twelfth Report of 2008, I would like to draw the Senate’s attention to amendments moved by the government to the Offshore Petroleum Amendment (Greenhouse Gas Storage) Bill 2008. These amendments were agreed to by the Senate on Monday this week and were made as a direct result of the committee’s consideration of that bill.

In its Alert Digest No. 10 of 2008, the committee, in considering government amendments made in the other place, commented that criteria for determining whether there is a ‘significant risk’ of one person’s operations having a ‘significant adverse impact’ on another person’s operations, under specified sections of the bill, were to be included in regulations. The regulation-making power contained in the bill was expressed in extremely broad terms. The committee considered that this may inappropriately delegate legislative powers, in breach of principle 1(a)(iv) of the committee’s terms of reference, and sought the Minister’s advice whether these criteria might be included in the primary legislation rather than in the regulations.

In a response to the committee (which is included in the Twelfth Report of 2008), the Minister for Resources and Energy stated that the Government had proposed an amendment to the bill to address the committee’s concerns, namely defining what constitutes a significant impact and providing for the regulations on impact to be assessed against a threshold. Pursuant to the amendment, the regulations must also take into account:

• the probability of the occurrence of an adverse impact;
• the extent of the adverse impact; and
• the extent of the impact relative to the extent of petroleum operations in the petroleum title area impacted.

In essence, therefore, the amendments will enable greater guidance and certainty to be contained in the regulations in relation to determining significant risk as to the various interests of the relevant parties who are potentially affected by the operation of this legislation.

The committee is very pleased to note these amendments. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank the Minister for responding to the committee’s concerns in relation to this bill. The results in this case once again serve to highlight the important work of this committee in its scrutiny role.

I commend the committee’s Twelfth Report of 2008 and Alert Digest No. 12 of 2008 to the Senate.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Question agreed to.