Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Minister for Resources and Energy and the Minister for Tourism, Mr Martin Ferguson, I table a ministerial statement on an update on the Montara oil spill incident.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

Senators will be acutely aware that I have taken a very deep interest in this oil spill in the Timor Sea. This is a disaster of incredible proportions. It went on for over 10 weeks—73 days—and, even by the company’s estimates, which we think are inaccurate, leaked over 4.5 million litres of oil. However, the estimates given to us by the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism during Senate estimates indicate that it could have been as high as between 10 and 20 million litres of oil. The extended environmental damage of this spill is unknown because monitoring from the start of this spill was not undertaken. The government in fact only commissioned a five-day scientific review of those impacts. I am not maligning the scientific report at all—I think it was very good given the circumstances. It showed that there were a lot of animals that were potentially interacting with the oil and being attracted to it, including sea snakes, turtles, killer whales and dolphins. Of course, they are also very important fishing and fish-sporting grounds. The damage to the fishing industry is unknown at this stage. There is evidence that the oil has gone into Indonesian waters and is impacting adversely on Indonesian fishing communities.

We believe that the oil spill and the inquiry will have important consequences for the offshore oil and gas industry in Australia and that, if there are any problems found with our regulatory process or anything could be done to prevent this type of accident happening again, we will need to make some amendments. The government has rightly called for an inquiry into the oil spill. I was pleased to see that the Minister for Resources and Energy announced that two days later the oil leak was stopped. However, we believe there remain some significant unanswered questions about this commission of inquiry. For a start, it is still unclear whether there will be public hearings. The minister has not, through the terms of reference, explicitly make clear that public hearings will be part of the inquiry. To date, the commissioner has withheld comment on whether there will definitely be public hearings. In our view, to ensure that this process is accountable and transparent, there have to be public hearings. The way that the terms of reference for the inquiry are drafted means that the inquiry could happen totally behind closed doors, which we do not think is appropriate. Commissioner Borthwick needs to quickly reassure the community that there will be public hearings. We also believe that the government needs to guarantee that it will release the commission of inquiry report at the end of April and release it in a very timely manner.

One of the key elements that we are deeply concerned about is the fact that the terms of reference do not make it plain that the inquiry will review the government’s response to this spill. It does not have specific terms of reference. The terms of reference mainly focus on the actions of the company, the particular agency’s response, whether the regulatory process was met and whether it is adequate. While we of course support those terms of reference, we believe there needs to be a very clear review of how different government agencies responded, how ministers responded and how the responses were coordinated. That was unclear, as I highlighted during the 10 weeks of the incident, and that needs to be reviewed.

Another area that we are concerned about is that it is not clear in the terms of reference whether the possible impact on Indonesian waters will be reviewed. It is unclear at this stage whether the inquiry will investigate the impact of the oil spill and, in particular, its impact on Indonesian fishing communities. There is evidence to suggest that the Montara oil may be impacting on the fishing grounds of Indonesian fishers. These claims need to be investigated and the government must secure a guarantee from PTTEP that, if the oil is found to have impacted on Indonesian waters and on Indonesian fishers, they will be compensated quickly and fairly. These fishers rely so heavily on these fishing grounds as a source of both income and protein. It has been reported that some families are not eating fish at the moment because they are concerned that they may be contaminated with oil, and this needs to be addressed by the commission of inquiry as well.

The inquiry was put in place 12 days ago, but we are concerned that there is still nowhere for people to send submissions. We are fielding calls from stakeholders wanting to make submissions and to be involved in the process and at the moment I am not able to direct them anywhere. We are hoping that the commissioner will announce where people can send submissions immediately, because of course these issues are currently in people’s minds. People want to be able to contribute to the inquiry. In fact, I have had dozens of emails about this issue. People clearly want to contribute their evidence, their thoughts and information that they have into this inquiry. It is absolutely essential that the commissioner open the process. It has been said that they will be taking submissions. It is unclear at this stage whether those submissions will also be made public. We believe that they should be, but we are calling on the commissioner to please open the period for submissions immediately so that people can start contributing.

Although we agree with the reporting date, it is at the end of April. Given the complexity of some of these issues, that is a relatively short period of time. I am not complaining about that, but it does mean that the commissioner needs to get down and get those submissions in so the commission can review them and hold hearings. As I said earlier, we believe the hearings need to be public hearings. We believe there is a lot to be learned from this incident. We still do not know the causes. The company are now claiming that they know but, unfortunately, they have not let on to the community. If I understood correctly what was said at estimates, up until that date they had not told the government what they believed was the cause of the incident. We do not know the cause of the fire, which unfortunately started on 1 November and was put out—thank goodness—on 3 November. As I said, we do not know the impact of this disaster on the marine environment. We do not know if it is having an impact on Indonesian waters or on Indonesian fish. We do not know what impact it has had on the fishing industry. We do not know if the regulatory process was in fact complied with or if that caused the accident, and we do not know at this stage whether there needs to be a tightening of the regulation.

There are clearly a wide range of issues that need to be considered during this inquiry, and we encourage the community to participate in the inquiry as much as possible. We believe that it needs to be an open and transparent process. We encourage as many people as possible to participate and we look forward very keenly to the report of the inquiry and the government’s response.

Question agreed to.