Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Hanson-Young for the question. I will respond to a number of the assertions in her contribution just now. At the risk of repeating myself, the government has been very clear and very up-front about our motivation for introducing the legislation that's before us now. The first is that since 2009 there's been a need for a response to the amendments that were made to the London protocol. The previous government commenced a process to respond to those amendments that were made in 2009. It was considered by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties in 2020. Earlier this year, the Minister for the Environment and Water, Minister Plibersek, referred questions more generally around transport or movement of carbon dioxide to the House Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water. Subsequent to that, the bill was introduced, and a Senate inquiry took place. This is a longstanding piece of policy work, which goes to my second point.

The government is involved in a substantial, complex, important project to put in place the policy settings to allow our economy to transition towards net zero in 2050. That is a large, complex piece of policy that cuts across many different sectors of the economy and requires a sensible approach to the full range of technologies that might be available to businesses as part of that transition. The government has made it clear that one of the many things that are required as part of this is to strengthen the arrangements for carbon capture and storage. There is a broader process underway to review the regulatory arrangements that are in place for carbon capture and storage generally. The bill before us is part of that. As has been explained on many occasions to the chamber, it seeks to implement a set of regulatory arrangements that are predictable and certain for the community and for proponents. It puts in place a set of tests about the environmental assurances that would need to be in place to allow a transport or movement of carbon dioxide to take place.

So I don't accept the characterisation in relation to the government's motivation in bringing this forward. I find it hard to understand how anyone could seriously put the proposition that a bill which contains a set of propositions that have been considered by committees in this parliament since 2020 and which has in the last week been subject to five days of debate could possibly be described as being 'rammed through'. There has been extensive public discussion about the matters canvassed in the bill.

In relation to your specific question, I don't have information with me about the specific interactions between ministers and stakeholders in the last week. I can say this, though. Of course members of this government engage with stakeholders. They engage with stakeholders from the business community, the environment community, the trade union movement and many other groups—all of the entities that have an interest in a transition that supports prosperity and supports the economic interests of the community overall.