Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will get back to it. The Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Benefit to Australia) Bill 2020, as is constructed, has a series of objectives. I listened to Senator Hanson carefully as she made her remarks in support of the bill. Senator Hanson is correct to point to the many, many years of energy policy failure in this country. She is correct to point out, in particular, the failures of this government on energy policy, in particular in relation to gas and oil. There aren't too many ordinary Australians who can understand why it is that Australia exports gas to industrial and energy consumers around the globe at one price but is currently constructing import facilities on the east coast to import gas at a higher price. Allegedly, we're to have a gas led recovery, but it's hard to see that there's any real policy or any real substance behind the government's claims. From a legal perspective, this bill doesn't meet those requirements.

The existing Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act has two clear objectives: to provide an effective regulatory framework for petroleum exploration and recovery; and the injection and storage of greenhouse gas substances in offshore areas. Adding a legal requirement that resource exploitation is for the benefit of the Australian community doesn't, in our view, achieve the objectives Senator Hanson has set for the parliament or for the bill she has put forward. She is right to point, in particular, to those European economies and the way that they have handled these questions. The history of Norway in this space, over the course of the last 40 or 50 years, is a history of careful public management of public reserves not just in the interests of the citizens of Norway but also for all of the Scandinavian countries—a careful management of energy policy and industry policy that means that those countries are net exporters of manufactured goods.

Senator Hanson is right to point to the German example, where German manufacturing continues to be a mainstay of the German economy. In fact, Germany has a trade surplus in manufactured goods with China. It is the product of generations of careful industry policy, of active government, of making sure that the energy policy requirements of German industry are met. It's a complete counterpoint to the abject failure, over successive governments of the Liberal and National parties, to actually do the serious, long-term, beyond-the-political-cycle hard work that is required to deliver manufacturing industry, to deliver trade surpluses that deliver good jobs and to lower energy prices for households and for industry.

Offshore petroleum developments are already subject to a range of vastly more specific regulations to test if they're for the benefit of the Australian community. The existing act already gives responsible state and Commonwealth ministers the capacity to suspend leases if that is in the national interest. It's a political test, subject to the judgement of an elected official—as it should be. We don't include 'for the benefit of the Australian community' clauses in other regulatory frameworks; it's implied. It is clear that public officials and elected officials should act in the community interest. When the parliament legislates, it legislates in the interests of the Australian community.

Of course, that's open to political debate. It's the very source of political debate. Adding a redundant 'for the benefit of the Australian community' clause doesn't mean that oil and gas developments are environmentally sustainable; it doesn't mandate that Australian oil and gas investments should employ Australian workers and offer them decent wages and conditions; it doesn't deliver the objective that they should create real tax revenues that can be spent on protecting vulnerable Australians and making the country stronger; and it doesn't mean that cheap natural gas produced here could be used in Australian industry.

Those are all objectives that I'm sure Senator Hanson shares with most of the other senators in this place. If senators were interested in pursuing those objectives they would have voted for them in previous legislation and would have forced the government, over the course of this last miserable eight years, to do its job in the interests of Australian citizens and Australian industry. If we want to deliver a result in this parliament which meant that more tax revenue was extracted from these projects then we won't deliver that objective by amending this piece of legislation.

If we were concerned in this parliament about the wages and conditions of workers in offshore gas, well, where was this parliament when workers at the Esso offshore rig in Longford had their pay cut by 40 per cent? There was a picket line for 742 days, trying to defend the rights and interests of those workers. There were 742 opportunities for senators in this place to show their support while, this week, we'll be considering legislation which would strengthen the hand of companies which want to cut the wages and conditions of ordinary workers. There will be an opportunity this week to be on the side of ordinary workers in collective bargaining and trying to defend their jobs and wages against companies which will use every trick in the book—every opportunity in the legislation—to reduce costs and to act against the interests of ordinary people.

The public interest test is capable of managing concerns about offshore gas developments. It does require some leadership. There is even a recent example: the application by Advent Energy to open up petroleum exploration from Manly to Newcastle as close as five kilometres offshore. The licence, called PEP 11, would have opened up some of our most densely populated and most tourism-dependent coastline to gas exploration. It was an absurd and dangerous proposition. It didn't stack up from an economic perspective, an environmental perspective or, indeed, an energy perspective. Opposition to the proposal included the local tourism industry; the local fishing industry; local surfing groups; Indigenous communities; local Labor MPs; local Independent members of parliament, such as Ms Steggall; and local Liberal MPs, such as Ms Wicks and Mr Falinski. Even the New South Wales Nationals—not known for their environmental credentials—opposed the project.

But the minister who had the power to sign off on the proposal wasn't swayed. The member for Wide Bay said that he was concerned about some of the exaggerated claims being made by groups who are opposed to the permit. He went on to say:

I mean, this exploration area is over 4000 square kilometres. A well, if one is actually successful in terms of an exploration permit, is only the size of a dining table. I mean, I think we just need to have some perspective of what's been proposed. And right now, this is an extension of the exploration permit.

He said, 'Any rig is unlikely to be visible from the coast.' So the minister at this point was completely contemptuous of legitimate community and industry concerns, and it took the Prime Minister being dragged by the only thing that this Prime Minister understands—that is, negative public opinion—to that conclusion by public opinion to stop it. And where did he do it? He did it at the place this Prime Minister does all things: at a press conference.

There is in this process in this place the fact that changing the act won't fix the problems that Senator Hanson has pointed to and that many other senators around the place have pointed to. Changing the Prime Minister might have that effect. Changing the minister might have that effect. It requires public officials, members of parliament, senators and ministers who are prepared to act in the public interest. We are the second-largest exporter of natural gas in the world, yet our domestic gas prices are consistently higher than international ones. While the port of Gladstone is exporting over 20 million megatonnes of natural gas annually, other ports along the east coast are building import terminals. The coalition has promised a gas-led recovery, but their record on fuel security is abysmal. It is just bunkum. Instead of focus group tested targets designed to wedge their opponents and trying to dig themselves out of catastrophic policy failure, the government should try actually delivering. Regional Australia and Australian manufacturing need this Prime Minister like they need a hole in the head.

The gas-led recovery is nothing but a slogan. Like Goldilocks, we need just the right amount of gas: enough to deliver certainty of supply and low prices to manufacturers who use gas in their manufacturing processes at the right price and enough to secure grid stability to facilitate more cheap renewables as batteries and other storage technologies fall in price. But gas is very expensive. We don't want so much in our electricity that it lifts prices for households and businesses.

A recent example of the government's policy failure is that in the 2021 budget they announced that they were investing $220 million in—you guessed it—a competitive grants process to build an additional 780 megalitres of onshore diesel storage, but by October BP had announced they were closing their refinery in Kwinana at a cost of 750 jobs. Minister Taylor then announced that they were speeding up support for domestic refineries and that they would create 1,000 jobs, yet last month Exxon Mobil announced that they were closing their refinery in Altona, Victoria, at a cost of 350 jobs.

Since the Morrison government announced that they were securing Australia's long-term fuel supply, half of our domestic oil refinery capability has closed. Industry doesn't need the kind of help that the Morrison government offers. Nationals like Minister Pitt and Senator Canavan might like to parade around in hi-vis and make-up, but they are killing jobs with their disastrous energy policy approach and their fuel security failures. They are like myxomatosis for jobs, these characters. Eight years of blue-collar jobs have gone backwards. In the end, what they are really prosecuting is a weird culture war. They are importing American political rhetoric and exporting blue-collar jobs. That's all the Nationals and Liberals in this place know how to do. They can write a leaflet and they can post a meme, but they can't deliver on energy policy, they can't deliver on energy security, they can't deliver on lower prices and they can't deliver for Australian industry.