Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I rise to speak on the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Titles Administration and Other Measures) Bill 2021 and the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment Bill 2021. These bills strengthen Australia's offshore oil and gas regulatory regime by ensuring that the decommissioning of oil rigs is managed effectively and the cost—the immense cost—of that decommissioning doesn't fall to the taxpayer. It also clarifies the application of levies in relation to cross-boundary greenhouse gas titles.

These bills came about after the owner of the Northern Endeavour, Northern Oil & Gas, went into liquidation in February last year after being shut down the previous year by the offshore oil and gas regulator, after it had found corrosion issues that could have led to a major accident causing multiple fatalities and environmental damage. The facility was previously owned by Woodside, which had sold the Northern Endeavour to Northern Oil & Gas as a late-in-life asset just three years prior to the shutdown. This bill is really only part of the fix, with APPEA's position being that the cost liability in our offshore waters runs to some $60 billion over the next 30 years, so Woodside is once again getting off lightly. It has spread its liabilities right across the entire gas industry. The Greens will support this legislation because extracting any tax from the gas industry is like getting blood from a stone, particularly when the Australian Taxation Office has called the gas industry systemic non-payers of tax. There are billions in subsidies to the gas industry and freebies to avoid paying the petroleum resource rent tax. What a dud deal the gas industry is for the Australian taxpayer, not to mention the climate.

Whilst we'll be supporting this bill, we're not going to gloss over what Woodside is getting away with here. It donates at least $110,000 each year to each major party year in and year out. Over the last decade $2.1 million has been handed over by Woodside to the Liberal, National and Labor parties. That's quite a lot of influence.

Remember when the Howard government planted a bug in the cabinet room of East Timor's cabinet? It was for the commercial advantage of Woodside. The foreign minister at the time, Alexander Downer, went to work for Woodside after leaving parliament. Australia spied on a vulnerable foreign government to advance the interests of this gas company, and the only ones that are now paying for the price for that are, of course, witness K and Bernard Collaery, who exposed it. This government then scrapped the carbon price, which Woodside, as Australia's ninth-biggest polluter, had to pay, saving the company millions a year. Now this bill will save Woodside a bucketload yet again. We're in this mess because Woodside offloaded an old rig, the Northern Endeavour, to a fly-by-nighter—who went bankrupt within a very short time of acquiring the assets—so Woodside could conveniently avoid the decommissioning costs. Woodside has privatised the profits and socialised the losses, as so often happens in the mining industry. Any sense of justice says that they should pay the full costs, but a long-term levy on the industry for decommissioning is the next best solution.

There are so many gaps in the government's knowledge. We need a forensic audit of orphan wells and temporary plugs because the government doesn't know where they all are. Who's responsible for those? 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 Tasmania, and even Victoria's iconic Twelve Apostles are now under assault. The Victoria Labor government is on the brink of allowing new gas drilling on Keerray Woorroong country in the Port Campbell National Park, right near the Twelve Apostles, which comes just weeks after the federal Liberal government opened up vast areas for drilling just six kilometres from the Twelve Apostles. The Victorian state government should immediately withdraw support for new gas drilling in our pristine oceans and on land, including at the Twelve Apostles National Park. The Victorian government should reject the application by Beach Energy to begin gas production in Victorian waters on the doorstep of the Twelve Apostles. It should retract its support for the Liberal government's plans to drill for gas in the Commonwealth waters surrounding the Twelve Apostles Marine National Park, and, frankly, it should reinstate the moratorium on onshore gas drilling, to protect farms and bushland and the climate from new gas.

On that mention of climate, I foreshadow that I will be moving the second reading amendment standing in my name to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Titles Administration and Other Measures) Bill 2021 which adds to the end of the motion:

", but having regard to the role emissions from offshore petroleum projects play in atmospheric warming, the Senate:

(a) notes the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the planet is warming at the fastest rate in at least 2000 years, rapidly approaching 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels;

(b) notes the recent statement by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that new coal, oil and gas projects, including offshore petroleum projects, must cease by 2021 if we hope to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees; and

(c) calls on the Government to act urgently on the IPCC's and IEA's warnings".

I will be moving that second reading moment once we get to that stage. I understand there is already a second reading amendment before the chair.

The IEA don't issue those sorts of warnings lightly. They are a fairly conservative agency, and that is a clear call by them to get out of coal, oil and gas and to not have any new coal, oil and gas by the end of this year. And the IPCC report which was released a fortnight or so ago is, again, a clear, stark warning—after a long series of warnings—and it is just absolutely terrifying. It shows that the world is heating faster than scientists previously thought, sea level rise is increasing faster in Australia than in the rest of the world and the world is hotter now than it has been in the last 125,000 years. The IPCC report shows that we're on track for more frequent and more intense heatwaves, floods, fires and droughts. Australia has the most to lose, but our government is doing the least to stop it.

The Paris Agreement says that we should aim to limit global warming to 1½ degrees, but the IPCC report warns that we might hit that 1½ degrees within a decade, much sooner than previously projected. At 1½ degrees, those extreme drought events become twice as likely to occur. The most extreme heatwaves, the ones that we only used to see once or twice a century, would happen almost every five years. And at 1½ degrees we will lose most of what's left of the Great Barrier Reef, after having already lost 50 per cent of its coral cover with three successive bleaching events over the last six years.

The IPCC report makes it clear that, if we don't have huge cuts to pollution soon—and that means by 2030, not by a fictitious 2050—1½ degrees or even two degrees could be out of reach. We're risking a world where climate change could become unstoppable and the world could become uninhabitable. The tipping points are fast approaching—the collapse of the ice sheets at our poles, the dieback of the Amazon and arboreal forests, the shutdown of ocean currents, the melting of the Arctic permafrost. The warning is perfectly clear, and, after that IPCC report, coming on the heels of the IEA's strong call for no new oil and gas, the failure to have 2030 targets, on the opposition side, and the failure to lift our pathetic existing 2030 targets, on the government side, is criminal negligence.

Mr Morrison is failing to protect Australians from the climate crisis and he is putting lives at risk. Mr Morrison's 2030 targets are a death sentence, and the so-called opposition is letting him off the hook by continuing to not have 2030 targets at all. Twenty thirty is the deadline for the climate, and, if we haven't done enough by then, then I fear it will be too late. Australia has already warmed by 1.4 degrees, and we are more vulnerable than other countries to extreme weather. Mr Morrison should be out leading the charge for global action, but instead he is fibbing and spinning about his own failure to act, and the world knows it. It's 'I don't hold a hose' writ large.

Last month, in the middle of the G7 meeting, which was mostly focused on tackling climate action, the Prime Minister nipped out of that global meeting and video linked into the Perth conference of APPEA, the Petroleum Production and Exploration Association—the gas lobby—and announced 80,000 square kilometres of new ocean permits for the fossil fuel industry to be burnt, to produce carbon dioxide and to add to global warming in a climate emergency, when the rest of the world was in a meeting focused on taking action on the climate. That was our Prime Minister; this is our government. So there is a long way to go before we see determined and realistic action from the Morrison government when it comes to climate change. I suspect it will take a fresh government and the Greens in the balance of power for any semblance of science based climate policy to be delivered.

The Greens are pleased that the introduction of these bills is finally taking a step in the right direction, albeit a tiny and belated one, and we stand ready to work with both parties to address the climate crisis, as always. This isn't going away, and what we see is a legacy of bad behaviour by the fossil fuel industry, who don't pay their fair share of tax and who get a whole lot of handouts from taxpayers by this government after making very generous donations to both sides of politics. It is a quintessential example of regulatory capture and, in fact, it is a plutocracy. The mining companies have been effectively running the parliament for decades, and it is about time we ended those donations from that dirty sector, transitioned out of fossil fuels, embraced the fantastic economic opportunity of a fast and deep transition to renewable energy—with all the jobs and economic stimulus that that could provide—and finally heed the science on the climate crisis to save what's left of this precious and beautiful planet that we all share, not only for future generations but for the other species that we share it with but also for the people who are already experiencing the effects of climate change now. The food-producing land of our northern neighbours is becoming too saline to produce food. This is not some future problem. This is not 2030's problem; this is now's problem. It is certainly not 2050's problem, as this government would have us believe.

The Greens welcome that we have a skerrick of action taken on the offshore oil and gas industry cleaning up their own mess. Frankly, it is laughable that we even need legislation. They should have been cleaning up their own mess for decades without the need for this legislature to tell them to do so, but here we are. We will welcome and support these bills. As I foreshadowed, we will be moving a second reading amendment which calls for meaningful action on the climate crisis if we are to have any hope of a liveable future. I hope and implore the parties in the chamber to support that.