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

[by video link] As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that, while the government's bill, the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Titles Administration and Other Measures) Bill, has some merit, it raises far more questions than it answers.

Before explaining that, I would like to note that I'm in quarantine. I appreciate very much my staff and the staff at 2020 in Canberra for their patience in setting up the remote parliament for me, despite my lag in technology. Nonetheless, I dislike this set-up. It is a mockery. I would much prefer travelling to Canberra, where I can see eyeballs and read faces. What we are going through in our country is a nonsense. It is a complete nonsense. There is a risk, but it is not being managed.

We see the same mismanagement in oil and gas as well. On 20 September 2019, a group of companies called the Northern Oil & Gas Australia Pty Ltd—NOGA as it was called—went into voluntary administration and subsequently, on 7 February 2020, into liquidation. As a consequence of the Northern Oil & Gas Australia liquidation, the Commonwealth government set up the Northern Endeavour Temporary Operations Program, taking control of the Northern Endeavourand, I take it, Australian taxpayers took on the costs—until a longer term solution could be agreed to. As usual, this parliament is looking after big corporate mates at the cost of taxpayers. Australian taxpayers should not be made to pay to the clean-up bills of multinational companies who make huge profits, pay no Australian company taxes and leave us to fix the mess they leave behind.

We support a bill that provides for changes to enable the oversight and scrutiny of transactions involving a change of ownership or control of a petroleum or gas titleholder through a merger or takeover. The amendment expands existing powers to call back previous titleholders to decommission infrastructure, and to remediate the marine environment in the title area where the current or immediate former titleholder is unable to do so. We support the intention of ensuring that an entity should not transfer its assets to avoid the cost of cleaning up at the end of a profitable project and leaving the cost behind to be paid by taxpayers.

The lessons learnt from the Northern Endeavour have shown that the current regulatory framework is vulnerable. None of the regulatory controls anticipated the circumstances of a titleholder liquidation. This is a serious concern. As such, events could be repeated as Australia's offshore industry matures and late-life assets are likely to be passed from established major oil companies to smaller less substantial titleholders. The concept of trailing liability, whereby a titleholder would be continually liable for the decommissioning and removal of its offshore assets, even after selling its assets and its interest in a title, ensures that someone other than the taxpayer is responsible for the liability—and that's exactly as it should be. With an estimated $60 billion in anticipated decommissioning liabilities falling due over the next 30 years, this government and this parliament must ensure it can call upon former titleholders to decommission and to remediate the title area in the unlikely event that the current titleholder is unable to do so.

We are the world's largest exporter of energy, the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas and the second-largest exporter of coal, yet we have the world's highest domestic gas prices, and our electricity prices are three times that of countries who use our coal to generate electricity. Now, why is that? Why can't we use more of our own gas domestically? Who made the deals that cut Australians out? This parliament made those deals over many decades. Why can't we build a transnational pipeline to bring North West Shelf gas to the east and convert it to produce liquid fuels like petrol and diesel? This gas is suitable for that. Why can't we use the gas itself to power cars now?

Liberal-Labor-Nationals are clearly in election mode, promoting policies and changes that they think will win them votes. The reality is none of them have real plans and real solutions to get us out of COVID over the next year, or to make the economy safe. This amendment—increasing the responsibility of petroleum gas producers—is an easy vote winner. But where are the hard questions being answered? Liberal-Labor-Nationals lack the will to listen and the courage to do something novel and appropriate for the people of Australia in our national interest. We Australians need alternative leadership that we can trust, and One Nation stand ready to address the big issues and to take a position that puts everyday Australians first. We can be sure that China and our Asian neighbours will continue using hydrocarbon fuels like gas, coal and oil for decades to come—our natural gas and our coal for decades to come. What's more, China exploits labour, sacrifices the environment and sacrifices worker safety, and yet we still buy their products. And Liberal-Labor-Nationals ignore calls for local manufacturing and industry development, as well as calls to support small business.

There are other facts that need consideration. The government—indeed, the parliament—repeatedly bets on technology that is unproven, does not provide jobs to replace those lost in coal powered generators, and is very expensive. At the moment hydrogen, the latest energy fad, costs $6 a kilo to produce. The government's dream, this parliament's dream, is to bring it down to $2 per kilo. Even at that price, far-fetched though it is, it would produce electricity at $200 per megawatt hour—four times the current cost of coal fired electricity. With solar, we have a dependence on China for the installation, the components and the generators. The cost is high, and the reliability of solar electricity is atrocious; the stability is just not there. And we lose jobs. For every job created by solar and wind, we lose 2.2 jobs in the real economy. As for wind, again, like solar, there's a dependence on China, with exorbitantly high costs, low reliability and poor stability. It's unstable and, again, results in the loss of jobs. We have an abundance of clean gas and coal. We should be an energy power, as we were when international investors flocked to the Hunter Valley, Central Queensland and Victoria to build aluminium refineries. These jobs are now gone, and, under current Liberal-Labor-Nationals policies, manufacturing industry jobs are doomed.

Turning to this amendment again, it's a soft policy for the voters. Why is the government not legislating to protect us from the huge cost of cleaning up site pollution caused by renewable energy generators? These sites are not forever. They last 10 to 15 years. That's it. Then they're redundant; they're gone. Actually, the assets are not gone, the eyesores are not gone and the pollution is not gone, but their productive capacity is finished. Eventually, like any machine, these generators will need to be repaired and replaced, and their components are expensive and highly toxic—for example, boron, gallium arsenide and cadmium telluride, which could cause serious or permanent injury such as nausea, skin problems, hypertension, weakness, kidney and liver disorders, heart palpitations, anxiety, depression and cancers.

Australians deserve far better. We all deserve to know the facts and the real risks and costs of these fad energies, these parasitic malinvestments. Australians need to be shown the agreements and protections that renewable energy providers have signed up for, and the generators need to be committed to complementary legislation protections to this amendment. The current legislation must be replicated to capture these energy generators, such as solar and wind power. Remember: we're paying huge government subsidies to them, and yet they're not committed to the long-term protection of our environment. They're a parasitic threat to our precious natural environment.

These changes require complementary legislation in the legislation governing renewables to ensure that they do not pollute our land, waterways, children's playgrounds, agricultural crops and the water we drink. The taxpayer should not be left with the clean-up bill. Fair is fair. None of us would want to see a farmer given back land after it had been used for a solar or wind generation only to find that the toxic waste on it is a safety risk to us all, a desert memorial to renewables.

This legislation is a bandaid. If Liberal-Labor-Nationals were serious, then we would have a level playing field for all energy sources, with all being judged equally on their quality, reliability and cost. This bill does not go far enough. The National Party's mates intended to leave the clean-up of the Northern Endeavour to the taxpayer, and the Nationals and Liberals were very quick to agree. That seems to be a pattern. One Nation aims to close this loophole. Senator Hanson has circulated a retrospective amendment to ensure that the company that made the vast profits from this project pays for the clean-up. Any party who does not support this amendment will be supporting an increase in pollution—and that's real pollution—and an increase in the bill for taxpayers. This government, and Labor, must show us it is serious about Northern Endeavour. The government must also go further and present similar legislation to protect us from toxic pollution from renewables.

Australia needs alternative leadership that Australians can trust, and we stand ready to address the big issues and to take a position that puts everyday Australians first. One Nation supports the government's amendment, provided our retrospective amendment is adopted. We support cutting all subsidies to renewables and letting them compete in a free-market economy against hydrocarbon fuels to generate cheap, clean, affordable, reliable electricity for Australian businesses and homes.

I want to address some comments made by Senator Waters in her address earlier this morning. All of her comments with regard to climate were based on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its lies and propaganda that the Greens wallow in and parade and push, with no consequences and no thought for Australians. No UN catastrophic climate forecast has ever come true—not one. There is no basis for any of these UNIPCC claims that the Greens peddle. Never has the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provided the empirical scientific evidence—within a framework, proving cause and effect—that carbon dioxide from human activity will affect the climate and needs to be cut. We will be dealing with this on a date fairly soon. Until then we will continue to expose the government.

We note that today is day 714 since I challenged the Greens—Senator Di Natale, who was the leader at the time, and Senator Waters—to a debate on the empirical scientific evidence that shows carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut and a debate on the corruption of climate science by the United Nations and other organisations. It's been 11 years since I first challenged Senator Waters in a public forum where we were both speaking. Every time, she has run from me. That's because there is no evidence. Now we have a toxic legacy that we will need to clean up in the future from this mess. But, in the meantime, coming back to this legislation, we support the bill, provided that it includes our amendment to make it retrospective so that the perpetrators of the Northern Oil & Gas Australia disaster are held accountable.