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

I would argue that a project as big as the Barossa project does come directly to why we have this legislation before the Senate. I would argue that those proponents have raised their concerns around following the safeguard mechanism, which the Greens negotiated in good faith with the government, and we did significantly improve that legislation. We know it is a matter of public record that the commitments for Barossa on their scope 1 emissions is around $1 billion, maybe slightly less, that they need to offset up-front. The Japanese investors in that project and Santos, Woodside—you name it—have all raised significant concerns about this. That is when the genesis of the CCS idea for this legislation was born. Yes, you can talk about London protocol, JSCOT committees and others in previous years, but it is now crystallised into this bill before the Senate following the safeguard mechanism. None of us in here are going to be conned into thinking that this is just a coincidence, that we are doing good governance to get this ready just in case someone should be applying. There have clearly been discussions at the highest levels with our government and the Japanese government. They want investor certainty. They want a framework that will give them confidence to participate and develop this project. That is what we're doing here today.

I just wanted to take to task comments you made in previous contributions when Senator Pocock had just spoken. You said we are playing politics with this and, if we really cared about the environment, we would somehow support this legislation, or that you would expect us to support a framework that better protects the environment. Minister, we're not playing politics with this. Everyone understands what the Greens are and what we stand for. We will do everything we can in this place to stop new fossil fuel projects, to do what the International Energy Agency tells us what we need to do, to do what the United Nations yesterday told us in its latest report we need to do. We want to stop new fossil fuel projects. We were not able to do that through the safeguard mechanism. You would know that we made a strong campaign on no new oil and gas, so please respect the fact that we are in here doing what millions of people voted for us to do—that is, to hold the government of the day to account and get climate action.

We heard from Senator Green yesterday when she moved that the Senate take note of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage committee report. She spoke about the great work the government is doing on climate. I want Australians to understand, when they hear Mr Albanese and senior Labor ministers go out there and say they are taking action on climate, it gives you away; it shows who you are as a government. The fact you are trying to sneak through this legislation—the timing of it—is to design a regulatory structure to facilitate the Barossa gas project, the dirtiest gas project in our nation's history. On top of that, I have significant concerns that the legislation, if we vote for it today, is taking the first step towards giving a number of companies an out on their decommissioning liabilities, if they decide that they have a depleted field that they can import carbon dioxide on. We are enabling that today. There is no way around it; that is the case.

Secondly, we are going to be conducting a massive increase in seismic testing around our nation. It is like a coming thunderstorm for our oceans, at a time when we are just learning about the risks and dangers that this activity poses to marine life, not to mention to geological structures, instability and earthquakes, which could potentially undermine these technologies, if indeed they even work.

And who would know?

I also did a little bit of reading, since we last chatted, about the Sleipner project in Norway, and even the most recent scholarly articles show it is actually impossible to determine if that carbon capture and storage project is leaking CO2. It was a significant source of concern that CO2 leaked out of the area that was identified as a storage geological structure. It's gone elsewhere in the anticline, but no-one's quite sure whether it's leaking. But they said it just can't be done. When you're talking about geological structures that are 20, 30 or 50 kilometres in size and on an ocean bed that is so complex and full of reefs and all sorts of geological structures—underwater canyons, mountains—how can you detect whether it's actually leaking? It's impossible.

So we need to be very realistic, and that is why the amendment before the chair and this chamber is to put assurances in place so that, if there is any damage or any liabilities around decommissioning or other things, that is dealt with today. And I don't think that is an unreasonable ask, Minister. So I would ask you again: why can't we legislate today to have these safeguards and assurances put in place? If you want the Senate to accept that we're going to take a significant step towards enabling carbon capture and storage in our oceans, why can't we have these safeguards put in place?