Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting amendments (1) and (3). We have a significant policy concern with the proposed amendments relating to entities subject to a commission of inquiry. We believe there are legal problems with the way the amendments will work in practice. It was a deliberate policy decision when providing for commissions of inquiry into significant offshore incidents that they focus on causes of adverse events and how to prevent similar events happening in the future, not to allocate blame to particular companies. This is for the courts and other legal processes to determine. Therefore, we believe your pro­posals to prohibit the Titles Administrator from approving transfers involving an entity subject to a commission of inquiry, and provide for formal decisions by the minister to suspend applications from entities subject to a commission of inquiry, would under­mine the no-blame nature of the inquiry. I also note that the minister can already effectively suspend applications through existing operational and administrative means, as was done during the Montara inquiry. Similarly the Titles Administrator could refrain from approving a transfer.

It should also be noted that entities are not the subject of the commissions of inquiry; incidents are the subject of the inquiries. So the proposed amendments fail to make clear what relationship between an incident and a particular company would justify making a decision against the company. The causes of the incidents can be complex and the minister would have to prejudge issues before the facts had been established by the inquiry. It is also unclear how references to an entity would work, given that applications are usually made by a group of companies.

With respect to the amendment relating to declarations under the Environment Protect­ion and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the Productivity Commission review of regulatory burden on the upstream petroleum oil and gas sector and the indepen­dent review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 both recommended streamlining environmental approval processes under the EPBC Act and the offshore petroleum legislation. Therefore the government cannot agree to an amend­ment that would preclude the possibility of streamlining environmental approvals pro­cesses. Having said that, the government accepts unequivocally that decisions on matt­ers that have been determined to be matters of national environmental significance that fall within the scope of the EPBC Act must be made by the minister responsible for the administration of that act. The government does however contemplate NOPSEMA pro­viding the EPBC Act minister advice on such matters where relevant to offshore petroleum operations regulated by NOPSEMA. The weight which that minister attaches to such advice will depend upon the rigor with which NOPSEMA prepares such advice and the respect NOPSEMA has earned with the EPBC Act minister's department as a result of previous advice tendered in relation to such matters.

In regard to notification of vacated areas, as part of its consideration of offshore marine parks policy, the government has been giving preliminary consideration to the possibility that the area defined by a petroleum title immediately adjacent to a marine protected area that is surrendered or terminated be reassessed for possible inclu­sion in that protected area. This assessment has made it clear that such a policy would not be free from substantial difficulties and complexity and should not be introduced without detailed consultation with stakehold­ers. While the government will not support this amendment at this time, it will continue to give consideration to the policy behind it. For those reasons, the government does not support the amendments.