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

[by video link] Senator Hanson was speaking to her amendments yesterday and would be in continuation. I'm not sure if she's on the line at the moment, but I am very happy to give the Greens' view of these amendments.

Of course we support retrospectively asking Woodside and other companies to pay for their clean-up in the ocean. The legislation before us today basically is putting in place a pathway to a levy on the oil and gas industry for future liabilities. The Senate has debated at some length in recent days what those future liabilities are. On some estimates the future liability is between $50 billion and $60 billion. That is for oil and gas infrastructure like pipelines, plugged cased wells in the ocean and rusty rigs sitting in the sea. We know that, courtesy of the extremely generous oil and gas petroleum resource rent tax—the PRRT, which we in the Greens call the petroleum rort rent tax—the oil and gas industry has very craftily been able to write off some of those future costs and put the onus back on the taxpayer. That's nearly $17.86 billion, according to the estimates the government provided yesterday.

Of course, those oil and gas companies have to carry the can for the rest of those liabilities, so they're going to do everything they possibly can in this chamber to move away from those liabilities and make the taxpayer carry the can or, as we heard yesterday from Senator Small—and I'll comment on some of his contribution in a minute—they plan to leave that infrastructure in the ocean as is and do very little remediation work. The Greens will support these amendments by One Nation.

Senator Small said yesterday that he was very pleased that I acknowledged—and he was commenting on my second reading debate contribution the week before last—that Woodside pay income tax. Well, I'm happy to put the facts on the table: Woodside do pay income tax. But my point was that, like a lot of other oil and gas companies, they pay virtually no petroleum resource rent tax. In other words, there's no super profits tax on this industry. The Greens initiated an inquiry into this back in 2017 and 2018 to push really hard for changes to the PRRT to remove the ridiculously generous uplift rates that oil and gas companies were claiming. This was not just on operating expenditure, with uplift rates of five per cent per annum, but on all their high-risk exploration costs, with uplift rates of 15 per cent per annum. Of course, there is also the ridiculous situation we've found ourselves in whereby, if there's an oil leak in the ocean, like we've seen up off the North West Shelf in the Timor Sea in recent times, the oil and gas companies can claim those expenses against their future payments to the Australian people and create an even bigger liability for the taxpayer. The Greens have pushed really hard to try and get these things changed.

So, yes, let's put the facts on the table. I was pleased that Senator Small yesterday also declared that he is an ex-employee of Woodside Petroleum. I listened with interest to his first speech in the Senate. He can of course come in and correct the record, but I don't remember him saying he was an executive of Woodside Petroleum prior to coming into this place, when he replaced Senator Cormann. We have heard a lot about the revolving door between Australian politics, including this Senate chamber, and oil and gas companies like Woodside Petroleum, but it seems the door is revolving the other way and we're now getting oil and gas executives coming into the Senate chamber. Of course, while he briefly acknowledged the details in the bill and the amendments before us today, what did Senator Small do? He spent the majority of his speech doing the bidding of Woodside Petroleum. He spent the majority of his speech talking about how we need to reduce the future financial liabilities of Woodside and their shareholders. To quote his exact words, 'We might work closely on more legislation in consultation with the industry to reduce their future liabilities.' As we've seen in the media in recent weeks, the plan is to adopt the principle of leaving this oil and gas infrastructure in the ocean. The Greens have significant concerns, as do a number of other stakeholders, about the environmental impacts of that particular issue.

What has been new since the debate started in the Senate, the week before last? Woodside Petroleum has now bought the fossil fuel assets of BHP, which makes Woodside one of the biggest fossil fuel companies on the planet. They not only purchased the assets of BHP, but, lo and behold, they purchased the future liabilities of BHP in relation to the clean-up of their offshore and onshore infrastructure, particularly in Bass Strait, off the coast of Tasmania, where I live.

I recently spoke to Jacob Greber of the Fin Review. He was writing an article about Woodside Petroleum, and I said, 'Why would you be a Woodside shareholder?' We've seen BHP, a company that has been extracting and burning fossil fuels for decades, making a decision to exit from oil, gas and coal. Why would they want to do that? It's because they realise these are going to be stranded assets. They realise that the fossil fuel industry has significant political risk. Indeed, I would say the biggest risk for these companies is that they rely on government to have their back in a place like the Australian Senate. And that's exactly why Senator Small was doing the bidding of Woodside yesterday. The risk to Woodside in the future is that they have invested in a model of crony capitalism. Yes, they have invested in the assets of BHP, but what they've actually invested in is politicians in this place having their back. They won't get a carbon price which will tax their pollution into the future. They won't have to worry about the $40 billion to $50 billion worth of trailing liabilities for cleaning up their mess in the ocean with all these oil and gas rigs and other infrastructure. Also they'll be relying on political support for a whole range of issues related to emissions controls—specifically, Australia's emission reduction targets. When I think of Woodside Petroleum, I think of risk, risk and risk.

The only thing that's going to mitigate that risk is politicians who are in their pocket. Let's be honest: we all know the problem in this place is corporate donations. We've never been able to break that nexus between corporate donations and the political power that they wield in this place with proper, transparent disclosure rules and with independent commissions against corruption, all the things the Greens party have been fighting for for decades. We know from the ICC report that the world is on the edge of an irreversible climate disaster. 'A code red for humanity' was the exact description that was used. This is such a critical time in history for us to break this nexus between the fossil fuel industry and politicians, pay for play, getting what they want in this place.

This amendment before the House today by One Nation is a good start. I commend One Nation for bringing this forward. It's good to see them joining the Greens in the fight to hold big fossil fuel companies to account. We need to see a lot more of that in this place. I look forward to making a contribution to Senator Patrick's amendment, which I understand will be coming up after this. Thank you.