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

Thank you for that clarification; I understand where you are coming from now. The minister can expect some further questions on notice, because that ownership had changed about nine months or so prior to the Montara incident and PTTEP, I understood, were subsequently involved in a number of other licence transfers. But I may put those questions on notice.

The point here is that, whether it is PTT or not, there is potential under the act at the moment for companies which have been involved in an incident to apply for licences. I understand the distinction that the minister was making between the incident and the company, but in this particular incident there were pretty clear reasons for concern about the operations of this and associated comp­anies—certainly from the evidence that was coming out in the commission of inquiry—enough, I would have thought, to make the government concerned about granting licences to those same parties until the matter was cleared up.

Hopefully this sort of incident will never happen again in this country, but you can never say never. Is the minister saying that he believes there is already enough power under the act, if the minister chooses to use it, to suspend somebody's application or not grant somebody an application because they have been involved in a previous incident or in an ongoing incident that is yet to be resolved?