Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, I present the committee's report entitled Inquiry into the 2009 and 2013 amendments to the 1996 Protocol to the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, 1972 (London Protocol) together with the minutes of proceedings.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—On behalf of the committee, I present the report of House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water's inquiry into the 2009 and 2013 amendments to the London protocol. The inquiry was referred to the committee by the Minister for the Environment and Water—who I see is at the table; very opportune—in November 2022, and adopted by this committee on 23 January 2023.

The London protocol is the intended successor instrument to the International Maritime Organization's London Convention—one of the first international conventions designed to protect the marine environment from human activities by prohibiting the dumping of certain hazardous materials subject to the issue of a permit from a relevant authority.

The 2009 amendment to the London protocol permits the export of carbon dioxide streams from one contracting party under the London protocol to another using carbon capture and storage technology for the purposes of sub-seabed sequestration into geological formations. The 2013 amendment proposes to address ongoing work into marine geoengineering activities, such as ocean fertilisation.

The London protocol has previously been considered by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties in 1998 and in 2007. In 2020, the Treaties Committee considered the two amendments subject to this committee's inquiry, deeming both as 'minor treaty' actions, and agreed that binding treaty action may be taken.

In undertaking its inquiry, the committee received 22 submissions and held one public hearing. Evidence to the committee was broadly supportive of both amendments, while the committee was told that the Australian government is considering ratification of the 2009 amendment. Can I say that some of the submissions we received, I believe, were excellent—from real professionals who understand what they are doing and who provided some really invaluable insight into the processes required and why it is necessary for these amendments to be ratified.

In conclusion, I thank the organisations and individuals that made submissions to the committee's inquiry or appeared at the public hearing. I also thank the members of the committee and the secretariat, in particular, who provided invaluable support in their work on this inquiry.

I commend the report to the House.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I would like to concur with the member for Makin's comments. The London protocol has, as he explained, been in existence for some years, and we signed up a couple of decades ago. This inquiry looked in to the advisability of ratifying the amendments to the London protocol, particularly chapter 6, and I am really pleased to reinforce the comments that the member for Makin has made.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the transboundary transport of CO2 and subsequent storage and sequestration in subsea structures, commonly known as carbon capture and storage, is not some abstract research protocol; it's very advanced. There are 42 projects going on around the world. The biggest in the world is actually in Australia, and we have led the charge in this. There has been a 44 per cent increase in the amount of carbon capture and storage in the last year, and all of the projects around the world amount to 144 million tonnes per annum of carbon capture and storage. Norway, with its Northern Lights program, is very advanced.

Signing up to this amendment and ratifying it will mean we will also be able to help our trading partners and countries nearby, including Timor-Leste, which has an empty cavern that has run dry now—a perfect vehicle for this carbon capture and sequestration.

The other thing I learnt is it's not like there is a huge cavern that gets pumped into like a balloon. People explained to me prior to this wonderful inquiry that it would just slowly leak out again. Trust me, it's more like going into solid subsea geology, like honeycomb, where the oil and gas has been taken out. Once the compressed CO2, under huge pressure and force, gets down there, a kilometre or more underground, it's not going anywhere. It attaches to the subsea geology. It's there forever. That is a myth that this inquiry has cleared in my mind.

The IPCC Working Group III's contribution numbered AR6 2020-22 mentions that carbon capture and storage is a key necessity if global emissions targets are to be reached. There is no scenario they can see without us utilising it. So we will not only be able to give that to Timor Leste, by exporting the stuff captured in our gas projects from our Darwin hub but they will earn an income stream from it. It will also help our clean energy partners, Korea, Japan and Singapore. They need this because they don't have any geology to use that. Australia is blessed with lots of things that we do. The world is still hooked on fossil fuels; trillions of US dollars, trillions of British pounds, trillions of euros and trillions of everything have tried to get us off fossil fuels. It's a very hard act to follow, because fossil fuels have allowed a flowering of wealth and wellbeing around the world. But we have this problem and we want to fix it, so this is the perfect mix.

As I said, Norway is leading the charge on this. They are very advanced. We should sign up and ratify this because we need to make sure that we have the capacity for other countries, like those ones I mentioned, to do their bit. We already have carbon capture and things happening in Australia, and there are many more applications here. We have stuff down in the Otways, as well as up in the north-west of Australia. So I commend the report and I commend the intent of this. Like other things, we're never going to meet any target unless we have things like carbon capture and storage. And of course, there's the other missing link, not related to this inquiry, for us to embrace nuclear energy.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.