Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

As the government has already announced an industry levy to deal with the Northern Endeavour and NOGA issue in the budget, Labor won't be supporting this amendment. Labor has been vocal on the government's negligence on this issue. In April, Labor released a statement welcoming the Morrison government's acknowledgement of serious and costly shortcomings in the regulatory system that covers the critical issue of how to ensure the proper and timely decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure in Australian waters. It's a shame it took the Northern Endeavour fiasco to trigger government action on this issue, especially when you consider this profound regulatory failure will cost the Australian taxpayer an estimated $210 million. However, the government has already announced an industry levy to pay for this. This is separate to the regulatory reform proposed in this legislation.

Making policy retrospectively is almost always bad policy and undermines certainty. The decommissioning framework has the support of the industry because it's not retrospective, and therefore it's not going to undermine the integrity of investment decisions that have already been made. This reform is too important to rush through amendments which could have unintended consequences for the safety of these projects and the environment.

To reiterate: we absolutely have concerns with the way the government has managed this process. It's why we moved a second reading amendment that was highly critical of the government's failure to take action on these matters. It's unfortunate that our second reading amendment was not supported in this chamber. We do not support this amendment that has been moved by One Nation.