Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I think that gives us quite a clear indication of what the object of the bill is. I think Senator Colbeck summed that up fairly well just a moment ago in his statement about the performance of the oil and gas industry. I note just for the record that some Australian companies do not perform brilliantly either here in Australia or around the world. I would cite particularly Woodside off Mauritania. I intend to bring that up on several more occasions. It may interest the Australian public to know that, whilst Woodside is prepared to have double-hulled tankers on the Enfield site off Western Australia, for Mauritania they went and got one of the ships that is on Greenpeace’s list of ships of shame—a single-hulled ship—because Mauritania is a poor country and they can negotiate with it in a manner that is unacceptable. There is a current scandal in Mauritania regarding the minister for energy and its dealings with Woodside. I think there is going to be much more about that as we come down the line while you talk up the performance of Australian oil and gas explorers.

Let us get back to this particular legislation. What we have now established is that the Department of the Environment and Heritage and the Minister for the Environment and Heritage do not have a veto over new acreage. It is as simple as that. It is as I stated. What we are effectively doing with this legislation is giving resource security to the oil and gas companies when they apply for areas offered by the government without the department of the environment or the minister having the capacity to veto.

That is why my amendment to incorporate the precautionary principle is important. Unless we have the precautionary principle, it is highly likely that in the next few years, with desperation about global oil supplies and trying to find new ones, we will see oil companies and governments moving rapidly to give companies with tax breaks permits over huge new frontier areas of ocean. If that occurs, we might later discover that those areas are critical marine environments. As I said before, we do not know very much about the marine environment. At this point, we simply do not know, and the Department of the Environment and Heritage would not have assessed or know enough about, the deep sea ocean in particular. We are learning more about it all the time as they discover new deep sea creatures and so on.

What is being set up here is no capacity to veto those areas by the minister and, once the areas are given, no capacity to get them back without compensating the oil companies for, as I said, the global commons. Those companies do not own the oceans. The government are setting up a scenario which allows companies to hold a permit for in excess of a quarter of a century. Look at how science and technology moves in a quarter of a century. The government are giving them, this year, the rights over large areas of sea and, if we want them back, we are going to have to go to the courts. In the case of the Great Barrier Reef there is, fortunately, a precedent where the courts found that compensation was not payable. But do not underestimate the oil companies’ capacity to tie up the Commonwealth in knots over a long period of time if we want to get those areas back. Why not put into the legislation now an amendment which says very clearly that a person carrying out a petroleum activity for which there is an approved environment plan must not carry out the activity after the identification of any significant new environmental effect or risk, or a significant increase in an existing environmental effect or risk, arising from the activity?

It is very likely, as my colleague Senator Brown pointed out a moment ago, that, as we have increased research on the impact of sonar and seismic testing on cetaceans, we will get to the point where we know full well that it is impossible to conduct those operations without impacting on a marine species. We will then be at the point of having to make a decision about which, the oil industry or cetaceans, will take precedence. That is the kind of conundrum that we are setting up in this legislation, and it is being set up because the legislation has been brought in as a single-use piece of legislation in the absence of a context of regional marine planning.

I am glad that a moment ago Senator Colbeck acknowledged that the Department of the Environment and Heritage seismic steering committee, which is dealing with the EPBC seismic cetacean guidelines, is continuing to work on those guidelines. They are hopelessly out of date and they have been for a long time. Every time there is a whale stranding we are told that they are working on new guidelines that will be implemented soon. Today we have yet again been told that the new guidelines are being worked on and drafted and so on. I would like to know from the minister when we are going to have those new guidelines from the seismic steering committee of the Department of the Environment and Heritage. As every year goes by and more whale strandings occur we are told that the guidelines are coming, so I would like to know exactly when we are going to get them.

But that does not alter the point that, if we get evidence that demonstrates that the increasing noise in the oceans is impacting adversely on cetaceans to the point where it should not occur, we are not going to be in a position to be able to get back those areas of ocean that we have handed over to the oil companies. Those companies can now go in to those areas speculatively, because they are to be given tax breaks to do so. Once the new frontier areas are identified the offer process happens and the oil companies come in and stake their claims. It is a no-loss situation to them, because they do not have to do anything until it is commercially viable. The companies determine when it is commercially viable and they can hold lease areas for long periods of time, keeping them retained. In the meantime, the community will always be on the back foot trying to get them back.

This would have all been avoided if we had increased the momentum in government on the marine regional planning process. We could have brought in legislation to cover the activities of the petroleum industry in the context of regional marine planning over fisheries, tourism and ecological considerations in terms of protected areas and issues pertaining to the petroleum industry. It could have all been dealt with in that context. Instead, we are putting down a marker for the petroleum industry. We are reinforcing the notion of resource security for the petroleum industry, which they, of course, applaud and want. We are reinforcing that at the expense of the environment.

I concur with Senator Brown: if the government would like to have other objects of this legislation, apart from that which I am proposing, then please bring them forward. It is quite clear from the government’s comments that facilitating the oil industry is part of the object of this legislation. That is fine. But, while they are doing that, I want the object of this legislation to require them to adhere to the principles of ecologically sustainable development, as set out in the regulations. That would require the joint authority, when making decisions about issuing permits and assessing the environmental plans, to have to consider ecologically sustainable development, which they do not have to do now. I think it is eminently sensible to put that in as an object of the act and to bring in the precautionary principle, so that the community does not have to take oil companies to court to get back the global commons. The science demonstrates what those of us who read about the marine environment now understand, which is that the marine environment is seriously under threat. With climate change we have high levels of acidification in the Southern Ocean and we are watching the collapse of fish stocks and so on. We have serious issues with the marine environment but, unfortunately, whereas the world can see the terrestrial environment, they do not see what is happening under the sea. They do not understand just what a threat the global oceans are currently under.