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

Look, we have had hours of debate on this and we don't seem to be getting anywhere. I don't feel the government is really answering the questions that we are putting to it on how dangerous this legislation is to our waters in Australia. The question was asked of the minister, and she said:

I have indicated to the Senate already that the purpose of this bill is to establish a regulatory framework that would operate in the event that a proponent sought to establish arrangements for the trans-border movement of carbon dioxide.

I've also indicated that, from the Australian government's perspective, projects of this kind will need to stand on their own two feet commercially. If a proponent in Australia seeks to establish a project in the territories of another country, we would, of course, seek to establish a regulatory regime that was effective and appropriate and consistent with our international obligations, and this bill does that.

Minister, you refer to carbon dioxide. A carbon dioxide equivalent, abbreviated as CO2-eq, is a metric measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their global warming potential, GWP, by converting amounts of other gases to the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide with the same global warming potential. Carbon dioxide equivalents are commonly expressed as million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents abbreviated as MMTCDE. The carbon dioxide equivalent for a gas is multiplying the tonnes of the gas by the associated GWP. So, for example, the GWP for methane is 25, and, for nitrous oxide, 298. This means emissions of one million metric tonnes of methane and nitrous oxide respectively is equivalent to emissions of 25 and 298 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. Minister, if you are going to make regulatory guidelines for dumping in our seabeds, how do you know it is only carbon dioxide? How are you going to guarantee the people of Australia that any other dumping may include other gases and methane, and how are you going to regulate that?