Wednesday, 6 March 2024

Bills

Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (No New Oil or Gas Activities) Bill 2022

Statement of compatibility

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (09:49): I lay on the table a statement of compatibility with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006:

In accordance with section 28 of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (the Charter), I make this statement of compatibility with respect to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (No New Oil or Gas Activities) Bill 2022 (the bill).

In my opinion, the bill, as introduced to the Legislative Council, is compatible with, promotes, and strengthens, the human rights protected by the Charter.

I base my opinion on the reasons outlined in this statement.

Overview of bill

The main purpose of the bill is to amend the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2010 to prohibit the grant or renewal of new petroleum titles in Victoria’s offshore area. Petroleum titles include a petroleum exploration permit, a petroleum retention lease, a petroleum production licence, an infrastructure licence, a pipeline licence, a petroleum special prospecting authority, and a petroleum access authority.

Human rights issues

In my opinion, the human rights protected by the Charter that are relevant to the bill are:

• The right to life (section 9)

• Property rights (section 20)

The right to life (section 9)

Section 9 of the Charter provides that every person has the right to life and has the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of life.

Climate change poses a real and present threat to life in Victoria. Lives are already being tragically lost in climate-fuelled extreme weather events including fires, floods and heat waves. Without urgent action to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution, Victoria faces catastrophic warming of up to 3–4 degrees celsius. These temperatures would cause extensive loss of life.

By banning new offshore oil and gas titles in Victoria, and therefore ending both direct emissions from new offshore projects as well future emissions from the burning of new oil and gas resources, the Bill promotes the right to life by limiting future catastrophic warming and its consequences.

Property rights (section 20)

Section 20 of the Charter provides that a person must not be deprived of his or her property other than in accordance with law.

By banning new offshore oil and gas, the bill promotes the right to property by reducing the impacts of increasing global temperatures and extreme weather events on property.

This Bill would directly ban energy companies from mining, transporting and burning new oil and gas reserves within Victoria’s offshore areas, which constitutes a form of property. However, to the extent that the bill may cause a deprivation of property by banning these activities, I consider that any deprivation is permitted because it is expressly and clearly authorised by the Bill.

For these reasons I consider that the bill is compatible with the Charter.

Second reading

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (09:49): I move:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Victoria is at a turning point in the fight against global warming.

While it may not have always felt like it, we’ve seen some radical changes here in this very chamber of what’s possible at the political level.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen politicians of all stripes go from mocking urgent climate proposals to actively supporting or even implementing them, whether they be renewable energy targets, a just and funded transition away from coal, or bans on fossil gas in households.

We’ve seen this transition firsthand: the Greens were usually the ones being ignored or mocked, now we’re seeing our policies being implemented.

But jump forward to 2024, and we applaud the Victorian Labor government for adopting many of these nation-leading ideas and more.

We have targets not just for total greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy generation but for renewable storage and the projected offshore wind boom.

We have seen Labor adopt a policy to ban gas fracking – after initially supporting fracking, a strong community campaign then saw Labor even put the ban in the constitution, which just goes to show how quickly things can change.

We have a revived SEC to help invest in renewables and hopefully help Victoria move away from brown coal more quickly than we are currently, because we know how necessary that is.

And as of this year, you cannot connect a new house to the ageing, expensive and leaky gas network – something that was raised by the Greens a few years ago, and at the time the planning minister said it was ridiculous. But now it’s happened.

These are all excellent measures that take the climate threat seriously.

But there is something that stands out like a sore thumb in Victoria – that is, Labor’s support for new oil and gas drilling.

And Victorian Labor’s support for conventional gas drilling – in our oceans and on our land – is starting to look pretty out of step with other places.

Just a few weeks back, the NSW Labor government announced it would introduce a new bill to ban offshore gas and mineral exploration projects in waters off the state’s coast.

That was a fantastic announcement, and we in the Greens applauded them for it. And it came after strong community opposition to gas drilling in NSW oceans.

Yet here in Victoria, the Labor government is actively supporting new gas drilling projects, with over a dozen projects on the books in Victoria, including right next to the Twelve Apostles Marine National Park.

For years now, experts have repeatedly stressed that any chance to keep global warming at a survivable 1.5-degree limit means no new coal, gas or oil.

Make no mistake: breaching that limit – which the World Meteorological Organization believes we may, sadly, hit in just five years – will be catastrophic.

Every fraction of a degree beyond it will cost more lives, human and animal.

To avoid this catastrophe means putting the fire out at its source: Victoria must stop mining new fossil fuels, not tomorrow, not next year, not next decade, but today.

And what’s more, the public recognise this.

Polling commissioned by 350 Australia and Move Beyond Coal last year found that a majority of all voters – a whopping 55 per cent – believe that Australia should stop approving new coal and gas mines.

The public, as usual, is more across this than most politicians.

Those 55 per cent of Australians are on the side of common sense, of science and of humanity.

They recognise that the usual fear campaigns from the profit-driven fossil fuel lobby about ‘keeping the lights on’, ‘transition fuels’ and ‘sovereign risk’ no longer cut it when the world is facing total, absolute ecological breakdown.

But as it stands, Victoria still has more than a dozen new fossil fuel projects, most of which are offshore.

In fact, over the next few years companies will spend millions of dollars blasting ocean areas off Victoria’s coasts with seismic cannons to hunt for new oil and gas reserves.

Seismic blasting, for those who don’t know, is the process of creating 3D maps of seabeds by shooting massive air bombs at them every 10–15 seconds, for weeks or even months.

These blasts can be heard hundreds of kilometres away and are loud enough to deafen whales, ruin lobsters’ balance, and severely injure or even kill essential zooplankton.

Some groups doing this will be the fossil fuel companies themselves, ever eager to find more and more gas to burn.

And others will be tech giants, like TGS and CGG, who will partner with oil and gas companies, like Schlumberger and ConocoPhillips, to blast the Otway Basin as part of the biggest projects in world history and eventually sell 3D maps for those seabeds to be drilled.

Yes, the market for data on new fossil fuel resources is, sadly, still a highly profitable one.

Like all new fossil fuel mines, these projects are incredibly unpopular.

Gunditjmara traditional custodians have made it clear, over and over, they do not want blasting in their sea country.

Councils all along Victoria’s coastlines have voted to oppose seismic off the beaches – Warrnambool City Council, Moyne shire, Colac Otway shire and Surf Coast shire.

Just this past month, the Otway Coastal Environment Action Network and other environmental groups ran a series of packed protests along the Great Ocean Road.

That included a mass paddle out from Warrnambool our MPs Ellen Sandell and Sarah Mansfield were lucky enough to attend.

Yet the Federal and State Labor governments have done nothing to stop seismic blasting or gas drilling in either Commonwealth or state waters.

In fact, the federal resources minister Madeleine King is happy to fast-track this process with dodgy permits known as special prospecting authority licences.

And in state waters, Beach Energy is set to expand their Twelve Apostles gas drilling project next year, with more seismic blasting even closer to those natural wonders.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. As I said, change is possible. Political courage is possible.

With this bill to end all new offshore oil and gas projects in Victorian waters, Victorian Labor could set the precedent.

You could stop the Twelve Apostles expansion before it happens and send one hell of a message to your federal colleagues.

What’s more, by supporting this bill, the Victorian Labor government could actually put a brake on future drilling in the Otway Basin by banning new pipelines, terminals or processing infrastructure in state waters.

No new infrastructure in state waters would make it that much harder to get oil and gas from Commonwealth waters transported and processed through Victorian waters and land.

Again, I just want to emphasise how sensible, even moderate, this ban on new projects is. Given the existential scale of the climate crisis, we really should be shutting down all existing wells and infrastructure.

Instead, all we’re asking Victorian Labor to do is follow NSW Labor’s lead and stop approving and renewing petroleum titles in Victoria’s state waters.

That means no more exploring for new completely unnecessary sources of petroleum; no new production licences or retention leases for oil and gas wells; no new infrastructure or pipeline licences, including for those that may link up to bigger, nastier projects further out in Commonwealth waters; and no more seismic blasting in our precious marine ecosystems with new petroleum special prospecting or petroleum access authorities.

Today, the Victorian Labor government has the chance to take the next great, crucial step in arresting climate change.

I commend this bill to the house and hope every MP in this place supports this very sensible, practical change to Victorian law, which will protect us, our kids and all future generations of Victorians, so that we can truly look them in the eyes and say we did everything we could to stop the climate catastrophe when we had the chance.

Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (09:58): I move:

That debate on this bill be adjourned for two weeks.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned for two weeks.