Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change) Bill 2023. The amendments proposed by the bill would, amongst other things, enable a permit to be granted for carbon capture and storage in sub-seabed geological formations. This bill is a naked attempt to facilitate more oil and gas development in our oceans.

I was put here by the electors of South Australia who see the climate crisis unfolding around them, who want to see a safe planet for future generations, and who know the new and expanded oil and gas projects are a danger to our kids and to the planet. The science is clear. The experts are united. Our young people are especially clear that their future depends on an end to new fossil fuels around the world, and a rapid shift to renewables and a reduction in pollution. We cannot put out the fire of the climate emergency while pouring petrol on it, and this bill pours petrol on it. It enables the crisis. This bill is on the wrong side of history.

Since I arrived in this parliament in July last year, there has been no good news on the climate crisis. I'm a social scientist and so I listen to the scientists. Global teams of climate scientists report that the earth's vital signs are worsening beyond anything we have previously seen, to the point that life on the planet is at risk. Recently, international scientists showed that 20 of 35 vital signs on the planet are at record extremes, pointing to the underlying issue of what they call ecological overshoot. Several facts really must alarm us, and they should be shaping the decisions of this parliament on legislation. This bill should be reflecting that science and that knowledge. We have droughts, floods, temperature increases, typhoons and changed rainfall patterns which are costing lives, homes and communities. They're increasing costs to businesses and to individuals and they're changing agricultural and food production. The costs and incidence of increased fires in Australia are there for us all to see. And it's not just in Australia—this year Canadian wildfires have pumped more than one gigatonne of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is greater than Canada's total 2021 greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2023 there have already been 38 days with global average temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. According to the latest research, the highest average earth surface temperature ever recorded was in July, and there's reason to believe it was the highest surface temperature the planet has seen in the last 100,000 years. Dr Thomas Newsome, of the Global Ecology Lab in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney, said recently:

The trends indicate the need to drastically speed and scale up efforts globally to combat climate change while more generally reducing our ecological footprint.

Dr Newsome and his science colleagues make the point that without action—including an end to new coal, oil and gas—we're on our way to the potential partial collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems, and a world with unbearable heat and shortages of food and fresh water. Many scientists find it very hard to talk about what their science is telling them, and many of our young people find this very hard to hear, and turn away from the news as a consequence.

Biodiversity is in decline so much faster than we have predicted—it's now frighteningly fast—and we must arrest its rate of decline and end the continuing deforestation, which is still unfolding in too many places in Australia. So many climate records have been broken by very wide margins in 2023, particularly those related to ocean temperature and sea ice. Scientists expect that, by the end of the 21st century, many regions will have severe heat, limited food availability and elevated mortality rates. We know the cost of this falls particularly on those at the bottom of the income scale—those in poorer countries.

In this crisis we should be here in this parliament considering legislation that rapidly accelerates change in order to reduce carbon pollution. Instead, we're considering legislation that does the opposite. It enables carbon production by offering unproven technologies to store it and, indeed, to import CO2 from other places and to store it here. Instead of legislation to reduce pollution, we've got legislation before us that's a naked attempt to expand pollution. The legislation is to facilitate, essentially, the Barossa project and its related Bayu-Undan carbon capture and storage projects as well as other fossil fuel projects off Australia's northern coastlines. This bill will facilitate climate bombs that put our kids' future at risk. Barossa alone is expected to release 13 million tonnes of CO2 a year, which is around three per cent of Australia's total CO2 contribution. That's a massive climate bomb. This bill, and the manner in which it's being rushed through, shows that both Labor and Liberal are working very hard to do the dirty work of Santos, the Japanese government and the investors of Barossa—after the safeguard deal with the Greens, which added almost a million dollars to the capital cost of opening up this dirty gas field.

My colleague Senator McKim has pointed to the revolving door of politicians into the oil, gas and coal industries, and the work they do to do the bidding of these large corporations. These companies are in a greedy race for profit, while the world knows we need to end pollution and stop new or expanded oil, coal and gas. The Japanese government and its state owned companies have behaved poorly after the safeguard agreement. What has become clear is that they are not serious about climate action and are using their diplomatic power to push Australia to go slow on the climate transition. This bill is a response to their complaints.

Carbon capture and storage is a public relations delaying tactic for the oil and gas industries to pretend they're doing something other than risking the future of our planet. Further, sea based carbon capture and storage will mean the destruction of tangible and intangible cultural heritage that will be devastating to traditional owners who have spiritual connections to significant sites, songlines, totems and ancient burial grounds in the oceans.

Pumping carbon under the sea from gas rigs or storing it underground just doesn't stack up. We know that many such projects do not work. They mostly underperform, and others simply fail. Chevron Gorgon has been cited by proponents of carbon capture and storage as an exemplar of a functioning facility, and, as we have heard in previous speeches, that is not the case. In the 12 months to June 2022, Chevron injected only 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 into the underground reservoir, while letting 3.4 million tonnes into the atmosphere, and, in the six years since export of LNG commenced from the Gorgon project, 20.4 million tonnes of CO2 has been extracted but only 6.5 million tonnes has been stored. The importing and exporting of carbon dioxide for sub-seabed sequestration risks turning Australia's oceans and those of our near neighbours into dumping grounds for the world's pollution. It is a fictional device used to enable more coal, oil and gas production. It is unproven at scale. Why should we encourage, and enable, other places to look to Australia for a dumping ground for their waste?

South Australians have had some experience of this, with big promises of economic nirvana arriving on the back of taking the rest of the world's toxic waste. In South Australia's case, in 2016, it was high-level nuclear waste. The state was offered fictional amounts of money per tonne of waste, fictional accounts of safe, proven technology—it was neither—and fictional accounts of the cost of building storage for this extremely toxic waste. It was a giant model of unproven assumptions, and South Australians said no. We're looking at a similar kind of proposition here: one which is largely unproven at scale but which provides vital cover for the expansion of oil and gas. Our country should not be the dumping ground for other people's waste problems, especially when the technology is largely unproven and is being mobilised to create cover for the expansion of polluting oil and gas projects, as this bill does.

The carbon capture and storage industry has largely been a ploy and a distraction, deliberately designed to greenwash a dirty industry and delay the inevitable: the essential shift to renewables. This bill is about political cover. It's designed to give the government and its friends and donors in the fossil fuel cartel political cover to open up new areas of our ocean to fossil fuel exploration. As my colleague, Senator Shoebridge just commented, this is about, and reflects, political capture. Let's not forget that, in 2021-22, Santos donated over $80,000 to the ALP, $38,000 to the Liberals and $32,000 to the Nationals. Santos has donated over half a million to Labor between 2015 and 2022, and these donations have opened doors. They have fuelled the rotating door to enable legislation like the bill before us, which boosts and protects the profits of Santos, while putting at risk the future of our planet and our kids. In a cost-of-living crisis, it is absurd that a Labor government is prioritising, through this bill, the needs of fossil fuel companies, while refusing to give help to Australian families doing it tough. Significant subsidies underpin the activities contemplated in this bill and related activities. That's public money, and our money has better places to be spent.

The Albanese government should be taking tangible, meaningful steps to fight climate change, by ending the expansion of new fossil fuel projects. Instead it has taken the valuable time and energy of this place to draft and bring forward a bill that appears to be written by the fossil fuel industry for the fossil fuel industry. Carbon capture and storage is a false solution for the carbon crisis. It is unproven at scale and, even if sequestration volumes claimed by the industry were achieved, it would offset only a very small proportion of lifecycle emissions of new fossil fuel projects. Carbon capture and storage has not proven feasible or economic at scale. It can only take care of a very small fraction of emissions. It prolongs dependence on fossil fuels and delays their replacement with renewables. It creates environmental health and safety risks for communities. And what will be the impact of this bill on marine life? In its submission to the Senate inquiry, the Australian Marine Conservation Society expressed concern about the impact of CCS on marine life, highlighting the effects of infrastructure and seismic testing and the lack of clear regulation. It is also very likely in its enaction to trample on the free, prior and informed consent of First Nations people in its proposed uses and put at risk their cultural heritage.

It is disappointing that the Albanese government has created space within the environmental legislative agenda for this bill in front of effective, future focused environmental laws that would actually help the environment. Urgent environmental matters wait for action while the needs of the fossil fuel industry jump to the front of the queue. We deserve better. Australians deserve better from this government. Our scientists deserve better—for their work to be taken seriously. Most importantly, our kids deserve better. This bill should be rejected. It goes in the wrong direction. The crisis we're in demands different actions that actually address it and create a safe planet, end the loss of biodiversity and give future generations the future, the lives and the communities that they deserve.