Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Chair, I have some additional information for the question I took on notice about the discovery process. I'm informed that this error, this mistake, was discovered by the department in the course of its investigation of normal standard titles administration.

On some of the other questions that were asked during this debate: the entire designated frontier area program, for those five years I mentioned, was costed at $250 million. We do not have the individual amounts or deductions that were provided to individual companies. The Australian Taxation Office has confirmed for us that all of the affected companies that I mentioned have already claimed their deductions and, I'm informed, there are no additional deductions in the future that could be claimed by these title areas. I just confirm again that the reason we're doing this is to provide legal certainty and consistency, and to protect the integrity of our system.

I won't hold Senator Sterle up for too long but, just briefly, I want to thank the Australian Greens for highlighting the benefits and use of fossil fuels yesterday with their gas-fired hot air balloon. It's amazing what fossil fuels can and do achieve—flight being one of the things we wouldn't be able to do without the use of fossil fuels. The Australian Greens conducted their own scientific experiment on the lawns of Parliament House to demonstrate to us all, once again—I'm sure my good colleagues from Western Australia would agree with me—how good are the oil and gas sectors and how much they can do. You also might be interested to know, Senator Whish-Wilson, that the hot air balloon itself could not even have been made without fossil fuels. Almost all modern hot air balloons are made from either nylon or dacron, both of which are polymers that are made thanks to the wonderful products from our fossil fuel industries. So thank you very much Australian Greens. We work well together—you've also highlighted the position of the Labor Party for us all: that they support you in this climate emergency, support you in shutting down the oil, gas, coal and who knows how many other industries in this country. But we'll keep standing up for the jobs and supporting these great industries because we do like to fly, we do like the modern technologies we all have, thanks to these industries. And we particularly defend and fight for the jobs that these industries provide to so many Australians.

The CHAIR: I just remind people that, whilst we've had a slight digression, we do need to be relevant to the amendments before us, Senator Whish-Wilson.