Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move Greens amendment (1) to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2019, on sheet 8741:

(1) Clause 2, page 3 (table item 11), omit the table item.

We also oppose schedule 17 of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2019 in the following terms:

Schedule 17, page 156 (lines 1 to 20), to be opposed.

I did go into this in a bit of detail yesterday. Part of this legislation supposedly ensures the valid designation of certain areas as 'frontier areas' for the purposes of the Designated Frontier Area, DFA, tax incentive. A mistake was apparently discovered, in that a number of areas that should have been eligible were not. This bill provides for an uplift rate and an incentive. As I said yesterday, the Greens oppose this. We oppose schedule 17, page 156, lines 1 to 20, of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2019. I made it very clear yesterday that we don't believe we should be giving more tax incentives to big oil and gas companies. Minister, can you talk us through the process of how these specific areas were discovered? Did the companies or the tenement holders themselves approach NOPSEMA or any other government department to ask that these areas be considered or was it discovered in some kind of audit process?