Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland in Australia, I make it clear that One Nation opposes these bills, the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Cross-boundary Greenhouse Gas Titles and Other Measures) Bill 2019 and Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2019. I cannot in good faith support bills that give more power to bureaucrats who are not using their existing powers correctly.

These bills strengthen the monitoring, inspection and enforcement powers of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, NOPSEMA. NOPSEMA is the same agency that ran about like cowboys raiding Lloyd's of London to get information on a vessel owned by an Australian company that they then subsequently ran out of business. 'Timorgate', as their actions became known, targeted an Australian company, Northern Oil and Gas Australia, NOGA, who were operating the Northern Endeavour, a purpose-built oil production and storage production platform in the Timor Sea. An insignificant safety event on board the ship unleashed NOPSEMA on this unsuspecting company who self-reported the incident. They took responsibility for it. After months of persecution over this single insignificant safety breach, the company went into receivership. As a result of NOPSEMA's inexplicable actions, China swooped in and bought the Northern Endeavour, NOGA's production leases and their airport on Timor. NOPSEMA has a charter to manage our offshore resource projects for the benefit of Australians, not the Chinese. NOPSEMA's actions resulted in the loss of 250 Australian jobs from a company that has paid $320 million in taxes. Perhaps that was NOGA's problem—a company that pays its taxes had to go, as it was making this government's big corporate mates look bad. Now we want to give NOPSEMA more power. Like hell! One Nation want a review of the operations of NOPSEMA before we expand their powers.

There is another built-in flaw in this legislation, and it goes to the parent legislation, the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006, or OPGGS for short. This act supports the notion that the right place for carbon dioxide is buried underground instead of providing life-affirming food for a natural environment. Are we going nuts in this place? This is absolutely insane. According to NASA, carbon dioxide production by humans is fertilising the earth. I'll debunk that in a minute, but I want to show you the power and significance of carbon dioxide. NASA has found 'from a quarter to half of Earth's vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide' and CSIRO has found the same. But note: they say it's due to rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. They didn't say 'human production'. We cannot claim that carbon dioxide, including that from burning oil, gas and coal, is making crops grow faster and stronger, improving yields of food and fibre that feed and clothe the world, because human carbon dioxide does not and cannot increase the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

I'll explain why. The earth's atmosphere contains a certain amount of carbon dioxide. The earth's oceans contain 50 to 70 times more carbon dioxide in dissolved form than in the entire atmosphere. The United Nations' so-called climate agency admits this. The data shows that, as water temperature rises, the solubility of carbon dioxide in water decreases and the oceans liberate carbon dioxide and we get a rise in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When the oceans cool, due to that big ball in the sky that you see in the day—the sun—it increases the solubility of carbon dioxide in the oceans and that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Nature itself produces an estimated 32 times more carbon dioxide every year than the entire production from humans. What that means is that nature overwhelmingly dominates the level of carbon dioxide production and, in addition, the oceans control that level according to the temperature of the oceans. And there are many other factors to do with the vegetation in the oceans and on the land as well.

Let me give you a few more facts, because it is an absolutely ridiculous proposition to bury life-giving carbon dioxide in the ground and, worse, to do it at enormous cost. Firstly, let's get the term correct. The Labor Party and the Greens keep referring to carbon dioxide, essential for all life on earth, as carbon pollution. I'll ask you all to think about the term 'pollution' in a minute. Carbon dioxide is a gas—colourless, tasteless, odourless and invisible. It's called a trace gas because the scientific community recognises that there's bugger all of it. There is 0.04 per cent in the atmosphere. That's four 100ths of one per cent. There's virtually nothing there—and yet it is essential for life on this planet, because every one of us in this chamber, every human, every living organism, contains in every single cell in our bodies the element carbon.

Carbon's not very common in the universe, but the beauty of earth, the miracle on earth, is that carbon is concentrated. That element is concentrated, and that's what makes life possible on our planet. Carbon is a source of life. Every one of us, including the senators now looking down at the ground, is based on carbon. It's in every cell of our bodies. When we breathe, we take in oxygen. We also combine that in our lungs, our digestive systems and our blood with carbohydrates—carbon and hydrogen—in the food that we take in. The carbon in that food produces carbon dioxide when combined with oxygen. The hydrogen combines with the oxygen to produce H20, water. So our basic chemistry is that we take in carbon, we take in hydrogen and we produce water and carbon dioxide—which are essential for all the trees on this planet. How ironic that the Greens demonise carbon pollution, because carbon dioxide, nature's trace gas, essential for all life on earth, is essential for everything green we see on this planet—in the oceans and on the land. So carbon dioxide is essential for life.

The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is miniscule. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not affected by human impact because of the oceans. If humans produce slightly more or incredibly more, the oceans release slightly less. If humans produce less carbon dioxide, then the oceans release more. We see that in the fact that, after the global financial crisis in 2008, most countries went into a recession—there was globally a recession—the level of energy used was less in 2009. That means that we produced less carbon dioxide from humans; yet the level in the atmosphere continued to increase.

What that means—if senators stop and pause and think, in serving the people of Australia—is that it doesn't matter if humans cut our carbon dioxide output, because the oceans will dictate the level in the atmosphere. Senator Sterle talked about greenhouse gas storage and capture. It's a nonsense. It doesn't matter how much we pump into the ground and take away from the plants, it will not affect the level in the atmosphere, but it will cost us—and I will give you the explanation later in this speech. It cost 1.3 billion just for one series of burials for carbon dioxide from power stations and cement plants in Norway.

Every single person in this chamber right now takes in air with 0.04 per cent of carbon dioxide and we're all breathing out four to five per cent, that is we're increasing the carbon dioxide levels in our air by 100 times or more. You, according to the Greens' senators, are all carbon polluters.