Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

There's a reason for the secrecy around this methane leak in Darwin Harbour. There's a reason for the sensitivity around it. It's because both the dirty fossil fuel industry and this government know that we have a methane problem in this country. When methane leaks from a project it's called a fugitive emission. Did you know, senators, that 27 per cent of all our methane accounting in emissions comes from leaks from fugitive emissions? That makes up just less than 10 per cent of our nation's entire greenhouse gas inventories, from leaks from these kinds of projects. It beggars belief that, at a plant in the Northern Territory that is being looked at and studied by our science agencies and others, we can tolerate this, when at the same time we're opening up some of the biggest carbon bombs, the biggest fossil fuel projects, in our nation's history, and we want to store the carbon and the methane under the ocean, which has never been done before.

Whether it's the Barossa project—remember the sea dumping bill in the last parliament?—or the North-West Shelf extension out to 2070, talk about fugitive emissions, or Murujuga art, if you want to go down that road. But they want to open up the Browse Basin, near the pristine Scott Reef in Western Australia, and pump the CO2 and methane back under the ground, under the ocean. Who's going to be looking at that? These are some of the biggest projects in our nation's history. To even begin that process they literally have to blast the crap out of the ocean with seismic testing for decades to try to understand these geological structures.

This industry and the governments that are captured by these industries cannot be trusted with fugitive emissions, whether it be methane or whether it be CO2. The best way to cut our methane emissions and our carbon dioxide emissions is to stop all new fossil fuel projects in this country.