Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is for the Minister for the Environment and Water. The carbon capture and storage project linked to Chevron's Gorgon gas mine is universally recognised as a monumental failure. The government's sea-dumping bill would allow CCS project such as this to go ahead. Specifically, it will enable the colossal Barossa gas mine to proceed. This will be one of the most polluting gas fields in the world. Isn't enabling the Barossa gas mine to proceed through passing the sea-dumping bill incompatible with our Paris Agreement obligations?

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mackellar. I know that her interest in the environment and her activism on the environment are sincere, and I appreciate her efforts in here.

Of course, the bill is not directed at any specific project. In fact, as with any project that might come before me, I can't make comments about individual projects. What I can say in general about this bill is that it implements our international obligations. Australia has already agreed to these obligations under the London protocol. The London protocol is about protecting and preserving our marine environment. The London protocol is widely acknowledged as best practice in international environmental law and includes rigorous environmental impact assessments which actually have stronger and broader powers than our current environmental laws. These laws also implement the 2013 amendment to the London protocol, which will enable us to regulate for innovative new approaches and technologies to tackle climate change—things like ocean fertilisation. Following the passage of this legislation, there will be many, many years of regulatory drafting and assessment processes still to happen before any project of the type that the member for Mackellar has described could even begin to be considered.

We know that we as a government absolutely need to take climate change seriously. In one of my earlier answers I went through a number of the things that we are doing to act on climate change. Climate change is core business for this government. We are absolutely committed to meeting our obligations under the Paris Agreement. We know our resources sector and heavy industry need to decarbonise as quickly as possible. That's why we've legislated our path to net zero, the 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030; it's why we are committed to 82 per cent renewables by 2030; and it's why I've doubled the rate of approvals of renewable energy projects. Through the safeguard mechanism we have established the policy framework to deal with emissions. Every one of those large projects has to fit within that trajectory to net zero.

The amendments in this bill are really necessary to ensure that we have a comprehensive regulatory framework that protects our oceans, including things like environmental impact assessments, risk assessments and management frameworks to ensure that best practice is adopted. We need to get that regulation right, but it's not anticipated that there'd be any international projects for some time. What we certainly won't do is what those opposite did, which is give big handouts—$250 million in wasteful public subsidies—to carbon capture and storage. I know that Minister Bowen actually cancelled that spending in October. I'm very proud of the fact we've had recognition overnight from UNESCO on the action that we've taken as a government.