David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion moved by Senator Waters, and I thank her for bringing this issue to the Senate. The saga reveals not only a staggering environmental failure but also a governance failure. For nearly two decades, Santos' Darwin LNG facility has been leaking massive volumes of methane into our atmosphere—up to 184 kilograms every single hour. This wasn't an unfortunate oversight; this was known by Santos, by ConocoPhillips and potentially by regulators from NOPSEMA to the Clean Energy Regulator. For almost 20 years nobody has acted to stop it.

We now know this leak was concealed, apparently to avoid threatening corporate profits and the approval of Santos' Barossa gas project. This is the cost of a system that too often treats climate vandalism as business as usual. Let's be clear: methane is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. This leak jeopardises our climate, our public health and the safety of the people of Darwin. Santos have had years to fix this, but today they've chosen not to. Today I call on Santos to fix the leak and pay for it not next year, not the year after that, not after their quarterly earnings call, but now. Start work to fix the leak now.

I call on the government too. How has this gone unaddressed for so long? How has a leak of this magnitude been hidden in plain sight? This is not just about a faulty tank; it's about a failure of transparency, of oversight, of public trust. We cannot hand a safe climate to future generations if we allow polluters to operate without proper scrutiny.

Australians deserve better and the planet demands better. It's issues like this that reinforce the notion that we are seeing state capture in our politics of the fossil fuel industry and of the major parties. They'll kick and scream and say: 'No, no. We may take donations from them, we may ram legislation through this place that seems designed for them, we may turn a blind eye to 20 years of leaking of methane into our atmosphere that we know is damaging, but there's no state capture here. We just happen to be making these decisions that go against what is good for our country and for future generations.' I urge the Albanese Labor government to turn things around. This is not good enough, and Australians are cottoning on to what's happening here. When Labor are in charge, they're no better than the coalition when it comes to gas; they need to change that.