Mr MARTIN FERGUSON (Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism) (11:30 AM) —Can I firstly indicate my appreciation of the constructive comments of the opposition spokesperson. With respect to the debate, the bills were brought on because of their importance. The Australian government regard the intent of this legislation as fundamentally important to our economic and environmental future. They are therefore, in our minds, matters that require urgent and proper consideration by both houses. Hence, we wanted to facilitate this debate sooner rather than later because our desire is to endeavour to get them through both houses to enable us, sooner rather than later, to release acreage for proper consideration from a greenhouse gas point of view in a commercial sense.

Secondly, can I say that I have no knowledge of any undertaking that the House of Representatives should delay its work to await the work of the other place. In this instance, the House of Representatives has finally started to seize the opportunities to consider legislation in its own right. Historically, this House has all too often not utilised its own committee structure to its advantage and has deferred to the other house. The House has been given an oppor-tunity on this occasion to consider a bill in detail and to express a point of view that the government has responded to, and we all appreciate the huge amount of work that went into the preparation of that report. I indicated that we would respond to the House report to enable members to consider our response in the debate in the House of Representatives, because the report represents the consideration of the bill by fellow members of the House and therefore members of the House are entitled to know the government’s view on the recommendations of the House committee.

With respect to the opposition, there have been and will continue to be consultations about any outstanding issues. Our desire is to reach agreement with the opposition because we appreciate that in the context of this bill they are absolutely supportive of the endeavours of the government to put in place greenhouse gas storage opportunities in offshore areas of Australia, the responsibility of the Australian government. I know that was the desire of the previous minister, the member for Groom, who sat down on a number of occasions in detailed discussions with me and my staff, and we will continue those discussions, the last meeting having been as late as this morning.

I commend the amendments to the House and simply express my appreciation to all members on both sides for their assistance in considering what is a very complex and difficult bill but one of major significance to our future in the 21st century.