David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Minister. Those organisations that you refer to may say that CCS has a role to play, but they also say that, as part of the transition, we cannot afford new fossil fuel projects, and all week you avoided answering the question about whether or not this would facilitate the expansion of the fossil fuel industry—not capturing existing emissions but whether or not this could be used to expand the fossil fuel industry. You wouldn't answer that until Senator Wong came clean on what this bill is actually about. It's about Santos, INPEX, Woodside, Korea and Japan. It's not about looking after Australians.

There's this constant cherrypicking when it comes to CCS. Yes, there are legitimate places and roles for it, but the legitimate place for it is not to allow the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. To come back to the amendment, which we have been debating now for a little bit of time, it is simply to rule that out, to say: 'We're totally on board with the London protocol. This is about ensuring that there is international agreement about what can and can't be done when it comes to sea dumping, but as a country we're going to listen to scientists and we're going to say, "You can use this technology and you can experiment on all of these other things, but this cannot be used to expand the fossil fuel industry."' This is because, as you said, we have the safeguard mechanism, which is binding emissions restraints.

It is just so disappointing that the Labor government is now creating loopholes for their safeguard mechanism rather than being serious about ensuring that the biggest 215 facilities are on a downward trajectory, something that this Senate voted for. We've got that in place, and now you're creating a loophole for the fossil fuel industry. It's very curious that it seems like everyone out there understands what this is about. We heard Kirsty Howey, the head of Environment Centre NT, refer to this as the 'Santos amendment', which you took exception to. It can't have been that many hours later that Minister Wong told us Santos want this. This is for Santos, for INPEX and for Woodside.

Minister, I'm not sure if you have any data there, but I am interested in whether you could talk us through the world's largest CCS project, at the Gorgon LNG plant, its successes and failures, and how much of the CO2 that they committed to capturing and storing they have delivered on.