Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy (Senator Wong) to a question without noticed asked by Senator Faruqi today relating to the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct.

It pertained to the Middle Arm proposal which is an export facility that this government is allocating $1.5 billion of taxpayer money to build. In Louisiana, USA, there is an industrial petrochemical project that's similar to the one recommended and encouraged by the NT government on the site of Darwin Harbour's Middle Arm. It's known locally—and now known around the world—as Cancer Alley. Since oil and gas pipelines feed the chemical production next to the Mississippi River, aliments from headaches to stomach-aches to heart problems and chronic illnesses have spread and spiked. This is the future that the Albanese government could potentially be delivering for Middle Arm, which is located 2.7 kilometres away from the Darwin suburb of Palmerston. That is why parents, doctors and paediatricians have descended on parliament today. They don't want this future that the Albanese government envisions for them. They don't want the government subsidising Australia's cancer alley with $1½ billion of public money.

The government calls this a 'sustainable development precinct', and, hey presto, the word 'petrochemical' gets wiped from all government websites relating to Middle Arm. They try and try to only talk about renewals and hydrogen, but their porky pies were exposed when, at Senate estimates, I asked bureaucrats and they told me directly, they acknowledged, that petrochemical and gas production were intended for Middle Arm. The government still persisted in saying that their subsidy wasn't for those things until US megafrackers Tamboran told the Australian Stock Exchange that they had a legal option in the Middle Arm precinct to build a gas export terminal to ship 6.6 million tonnes of gas offshore each and every year. The Albanese government need to stop treating these parents, these doctors and the rest of us like fools. Just admit that you're financing gas expansion and petrochemical production, or, if you want to listen to the science, just rule out gas from using that export facility. You can't have it both ways.

If the government were to change the contractual terms of their equity investment to prevent gas and petrochemical production at the site, they could kill the Beetaloo proposal, because there would be no guaranteed purchaser of that gas. The Beetaloo Basin has enough gas to increase Australia's total emissions by 11 per cent. It is a carbon bomb. The project simply cannot proceed in any way, shape or form.

Now, Santos told the Environment and Communications Committee that it doesn't make any economic sense to develop the Beetaloo for the domestic market; it has to be exported. So if the government pulls this $1.5 billion handout or simply says 'no, the export facility can't be used for gas,' we could stop the climate bomb of the Beetaloo being detonated.

People from Darwin who are here in the building today have some asks for two ministers. The first message is for Minister Catherine King: do not use this infrastructure money to enable gas expansion. The message for Minister Plibersek is to delay the release of the EIS until a thorough health assessment has been completed as requested. I might just pick up Minister Watt for an inaccuracy in response to a different question today, where he contended that health impacts are considered as part of an EPBC EIS proposal; that's not correct. The minister should know better and, if he doesn't, he needs to get some better advice, stats, and perhaps come in and correct the record. They should do a health assessment but one is not presently required.

The message from the Larrakia People is that they want a full cultural heritage assessment undertaken under Larrakia control before the EIS is released. They are using their Voice to Parliament right now, and one would hope the government could listen.

We had quite the journey from Minister Watt and also from Minister Wong responding to questions on Middle Arm today. At first they were saying, 'This is great. This is just for hydrogen and for solar,' but then they snuck in 'Oh, no, it is also for a LNG gas export facility.' That confirms what bureaucrats told me in Senate estimates. We know the gas export facility would enable customers and would justify the economic expansion of the Beetaloo Basin. We cannot afford that to happen. We will blow any chance of meeting your pathetic targets or staying anywhere near 1.5 degrees of warming. So be honest and use this $1½ billion in a better way by ruling out gas or by simply withdrawing taxpayer funding for this gas export terminal.

Question agreed to.