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

Later I'll get to Labor's shameful admission in this chamber just then of their support for the fossil fuel industry and a gas-led recovery. I look forward to looking in Hansard at the exact words that Senator Brown used and promoting and publicising those words. I think it's very important that the Australian people see the lack of difference between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party on the use of fossil fuels, especially in a week when the IPCC report warned of a code red facing humanity. We are on the edge of an irreversible disaster if we don't immediately and rapidly reduce our emissions. The idea that Labor would come into this chamber and say that gas is an important way of reducing emissions is literally abominable. I'll get to that in a little bit more detail shortly.

Let's talk about a perfect scam. Suppose I'm a big petroleum company—a multibillion dollar company—and I have these ageing assets that have been written off to nothing in my balance sheet. I've never had to pay petroleum resource rent tax, because of a very generous scheme—interestingly, one of the architects who set that up was Dr Emerson from the Labor Party. Nevertheless, I've been claiming uplift of 15 per cent per annum on all my exploration and five per cent per annum on all my operating expenditure. And now I'm part of a $350 billion tax offset, so I never have to pay 'petroleum rort rent tax' for the life of my project. I'm getting to the end of the life of this project, and guess what I discover? I've got multimillions of dollars—if not potentially hundreds of millions of dollars—worth of liability to clean up these giant rusting rigs in the ocean. What would I do? What would be the perfect scam? Senators, what could we do?

If there was a little bit of oil and gas left in my field, I might be able to sell this petroleum licence. And who would want a petroleum licence at the end of its life with a liability for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars? Probably a nice penny dreadful listed on the stock market. I could go out and raise some capital. I could say I'm buying an exploration and production licence from Woodside Petroleum, for example. My share price goes up. I can sell my shares, make millions of dollars and squeeze every last bit of oil out of that field. Then, when the liability comes along, I can declare bankruptcy. Bob's your uncle—everybody wins! Everyone's a winner! No, sorry, there's a loser—the taxpayer.

Do you think that's a theoretical example? I don't think so. I think there is a very real scenario here where a large company—Woodside Petroleum—sold off an ageing asset to a very small company. Surely they must have known this company wasn't capitalised to deal with that liability. That company purchased the asset and, lo and behold, wasn't able to meet its commitments for maintenance. Sure enough, the whole thing went pear-shaped, and the taxpayer had to step in and foot the bill. That is exactly what happened. I've put multiple questions about this scenario to NOPSEMA and to the government at estimates, and I know other senators have as well. I know that there are environment groups out there like the Wilderness Society that have been doing a lot of work on this. I'd like to acknowledge in the Senate today the Australian Wilderness Society and, in particular, Jess and Tim Beshara, for the work that they've done on making many senators in this place—not just the Greens; they have been talking to all political parties—aware of this impending problem. What we've seen is just the tip of the iceberg.

Senator Brown talked about the Northern Endeavour, but there are a raft of ageing assets out there in the ocean, rust buckets, that are potential pollutants and that need to be remediated and fixed. We've got to get on top of this now. I heard the proposal that maybe one of these rusting, ageing production platforms might make a good artificial reef. Why don't we literally take a giant welder to it and cut it into pieces and dump it in the ocean and make a habitat for fish? Well, I'm not sure what the cost of doing that would be—I haven't actually looked at the numbers—but, even if it were acceptable from an environmental point of view, which I very much doubt, I'm sure it would be a cost-saving measure on behalf of companies that make a lot of money. They make significant returns on equity and significant returns on capital. They have some of the most profitable companies on the planet, and getting tax out of them is like getting blood out of a stone. I have sat on numerous inquiries over many years on this exact issue, and I can tell you that the Australian tax department themselves calls them 'systemic non-payers of tax'.

Interestingly enough, I will acknowledge, Woodside Petroleum does pay tax. Woodside Petroleum does pay tax. They're one of the few that haven't been dragged through the courts by the Australian tax office. But that doesn't go for the petroleum resource rent tax. The whole of the fossil fuel sector have managed to experience that largesse over many years, without paying the Australian people for the extraction of super profits from our publicly owned resources. But there are a number of companies out there that aren't paying their tax. We're all familiar with the tax department's High Court case against Chevron, for example, and believe me there are many others. So, of course, we will support any pathway towards levying some money out of the fossil fuel industry to pay for the clean-up of their own assets, which they have exploited over many years and made billions of dollars of profit from. That makes perfect sense.

Just this last month, in the middle of the G7 meeting which was predominantly focused on looking at taking action on climate, the Prime Minister sneaked off and presented directly to the APPEA, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, conference in Perth. What did the Prime Minister do when he spoke directly to that conference via video link from London, while the rest of the world was talking about acting on climate change? He announced 80,000 square kilometres of new ocean permits for the fossil fuel industry—80,000 square kilometres of areas to be opened up to the fossil fuel industry, to be burnt to produce carbon dioxide and add to global warming. In a climate emergency, in the middle of a conference discussing action on climate, that's our Prime Minister. That's this government. That is a national disgrace and a shame.

How many more of these assets are there going to be for future generations to decommission? There are hundreds of production platforms around this country, including in Bass Strait, off the coast of my home state of Tasmania. So, this is very important to get right. But, while we're at it, let's not kid ourselves. There are enough reserves of fossil fuel, petroleum and gas already discovered around the world such that, if we were to burn them, it would push us above two degrees of warming. Remember, the IPCC said we have to limit warming to 1½ degrees, and we've got only 5½ years of our carbon budget left before we hit 1½ degrees. In other words, if we keep going, business as usual, we will exceed the target we all signed on to as an international community under the Paris Agreement.

Why are we still risking our oceans with dangerous seismic testing, with dangerous offshore oil and gas drilling, for a product that, when we burn it, is killing our oceans? It is warming our oceans. It is acidifying our oceans. It is the definition of insanity, and I think it is criminal, that we are still pushing ahead. In the government's spin this week we have heard them talking about the fact that they have exceeded their Kyoto commitments, that they have somehow reduced emissions by 16 per cent since 2005. Well, if you take out the Kyoto clause and land clearing—which Australia very sneakily snuck in to those negotiations—our emissions are actually up by 19 per cent in real terms. Australia is the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the world—the third-highest. We're also the third-biggest exporter of fossil fuels, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia.

We have failed to develop any long-term mitigation strategy to tackle climate change in the past nine years under this government. Australia is the only country in the world to have legislated and repealed a carbon pricing mechanism—the only country in the world. That's a shame, and an international disgrace. We have no meaningful policies in place to electrify transport. We have no commitments to net zero emissions by 2050. We have a 26 to 28 per cent 2005 reduction target for our 2030 milestone, when the IPCC report said this week that we now need to make that a 75 per cent reduction if we're going to meet our targets. The Deputy Prime Minister—the second most powerful man in the country—said just yesterday that 'it's not up to the government to have a plan'—it's not up to the government to protect Australians from fires and flood and famine from this climate emergency!

It's the government's No. 1 role to protect its people. Yet we hear that from the second most powerful man in the country. We have been constantly criticised by experts right around the world for having no nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement since 2015. We have consistently ignored recommendations on climate targets such as the Climate Targets Panel report out of the University of Melbourne to continue to cut emissions. We have tried to gut, and we ultimately reduced, the renewable energy target. Only last week we—shamefully—allowed a clean energy investing government body set up by the Greens and Labor to invest in fossil fuels. We repealed a carbon price that did drive down emissions for the first time ever by seven per cent. We're pursuing a gas led recovery even though there are better options with renewable energy and even though we know—including from the IPCC report—that burning gas is not the solution. Indeed, the IPCC specifically singled out gas in their report as not something you want to do. Yet here we have the Labor Party in here peddling the line of the fossil fuel industry, joining with the Liberal Party to support a gas led recover in a time of climate emergency.

If we do not have the Greens in this place and in the other place, we have no chance of holding either of these two parties to account. I am at least pleased that Labor have made very clear today their support for the fossil fuel industry, which cuts all the best available science. I hope that some in the environment movement out there are listening to what was said in here today. The Labor Party have made it very clear that they support more gas, more exploration and more development in the middle of a climate crisis.

I will just finish by saying one word and that's 'leadership'. If I could ask for anything from this parliament, from this institution that I think has dismally failed in its duty of care for future generations, it's leadership. We used to be a leader a decade ago. It's so sad to see the Labor Party walking back that leadership and supporting the government in a gas led recovery. We need leadership to stand up and say, 'We have to transition.' The costs of inaction by far outweigh the costs of action. We have to do this not just for our economy and for our community; we have to do this for future generations. It can only be done in this place. Climate change is an environmental problem, but it is first and foremost a political problem. It is politics and governments that have failed on climate change. This is the only place we can fix it, and this is a small step towards that. (Time expired)