Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

That is such an awful shame. The second amendment which I will be moving relates to accountability, which I am sure the minister will be interested in helping us improve. The inquiry into the bill raised quite a few questions about how profit is calculated and shown, which is a very important matter when royalties are calculated on a profit basis. Obviously the mining company has to declare how many tonnes it is shifting and how many tonnes of product it is refining and moving from the site, and that is a matter of record, obviously. The way that profits are calculated, on the other hand, can be quite obtuse.

There are two amendments here. I will move them as a block, but there are two substantive components to what I am seeking to do here—firstly, having the Auditor-General take a role in the way that profits are declared and recorded and, secondly, having the Office of the Supervising Scientist play a much greater role in the development of the industry in the region, with Supervising Scientist reports being subject to tabling in parliament and being passed to the responsible minister in the Northern Territory and the relevant land council to which royalties are being paid. I would be willing to split this amendment in two, should either of the major parties indicate support for the proposal. I also will not be holding my breath.

One of the drawbacks raised during the inquiry on the profit based royalty system, which held hearings in Darwin, was the possibility for companies to hide profits by various ways and means or to continue to plough profits back into capital investments and so on so that the company makes very few or even no royalty payments at all. The most commonly cited example—and I know they get a bit cross about seeing their name up in lights all the time—is the Xstrata mine at McArthur River, which paid royalties to the Territory government for the very first time in 2007 after operating since 1996. My amendments have the express purpose of providing additional support to the Territory government. No offence is intended to Xstrata in this case and no accusations are being made at this point. I simply state that that supervision is absolutely essential, particularly as the government seems intent on encouraging smaller and more marginal operators to get projects up and running.

What we are doing here is creating a more robust scrutiny of the calculation, payment and collection of amounts payable via the office of the Commonwealth Auditor General. That is the first part. That relates to clauses 23 and 24. Clause 25 seeks to extend the role—and make it an intervention role, if necessary—of the Supervising Scientist’s office. The Supervising Scientist currently operates to provide government oversight of the mine at Ranger. It does play a role—I think almost on a consultancy basis—in advising the government and companies elsewhere in the country. We are trying to formalise that by way of this amendment.

The 1977 Fox report into uranium mining recommended that a supervising scientist be established, having both administrative skills and scientific expertise to report to the environment minister of the day and to provide an annual report on the government’s monitoring program of the Ranger mine. At the time, the inquiry recommended that the office be legally empowered to require relevant information from Ranger operations and any agencies participating in research and monitoring of the site and be able to physically inspect the site and its operations. It was envisaged that that office would be a place where research and monitoring staff would work together. It was established in 1978 as a statutory authority under the Environment Protection (Alligator Rivers Region) Act 1978.

The Greens have been quite critical of this office. I have been critical of it myself in recent times—for example, over the adequacy of the office’s handling of a 10,000-litre a day leak from under the Ranger tailings storage facility. But it is a good model as these things go. Having the office, having the scientific and technical capacity up there, on site in Jabiru and Darwin, and having the oversight of the Ranger mine, I think you would be hard pressed to argue that it has not at least improved the performance of the company up there. It has served to remind the company of its obligations, of the standards, of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. It has also kept this parliament informed of what is going on. I have had some very interesting and useful exchanges with the Supervising Scientist himself here at a number of estimates hearings. It is quite a good model. It is certainly better than the way we regulate the operations at Roxby Downs.

If this office was seen as necessary at the Ranger mine in the Territory, what we are proposing here is that that same oversight and audit function should be entirely appropriate for other uranium mines in the Territory and indeed across the country. The amendments that I am moving now allow the Supervising Scientist to have access to all uranium mining, processing, storage and transport operations in the Northern Territory—that is, data flowing from the companies—in the same manner as is recorded at the Ranger operation. That would empower the scientist to report on the mine sites—the radiological monitoring of the sites, the future rehabilitation of the sites and any research activities that are undertaken.

In the NT Mining Management Act there is a section that says the Territory must consult with the Commonwealth before it takes any approval action on a project that involves uranium or thorium. There are a number of agreements and memoranda in place between government parties which provide that the Supervising Scientist is the first point of contact in those instances. So the NT government is restricted from making any approval with regard to Ranger without having consulted with the scientist and sought his opinion of that approval. I think that is a particularly good model in this regard. I am seeking some feedback from the government and opposition as to whether you would support the concept of the Supervising Scientist having an expanded oversight role and, if not, why not?