Senator O'BRIEN (11:40 AM) —Again, the Greater Sunrise Unitisation Agreement Implementation Bill 2004 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Greater Sunrise) Bill 2004 relate to simply implementing matters already agreed between Australia and Timor Leste. As far as the opposition is concerned, only those matters that are agreed between Australia and the sovereign nation of Timor Leste should be referred to in this legislation, because what this legislation is proposing to do is to implement that agreement—to give effect to the agreement on Australia's part, understanding that Timor Leste has to do exactly the same or the treaty will fail.

Giving effect to those matters is intended to clear the way for the Greater Sunrise project to go through its processes: obtain its investors; make its capital decisions; proceed with the processes of appropriate approval, dealing with both nations; consider the options as to whether there will be processing in Australia, at sea or in East Timor; and get on with the job of getting the project up and running. When that happens, and only when all of that happens, will any revenue flow to either nation.

The opposition's position in relation to the continuing negotiations with East Timor about a final settlement on sea boundaries is set out clearly in my contribution to the second reading debate, and I do not intend to repeat it. We have given a very clear and unequivocal commitment in that regard. But I should also say that we have noted with extreme concern in the past the government's decision to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. This has had the consequence that neither Australia nor Timor Leste now recognises that court's jurisdiction on these matters.

So, to make a purely technical point on the amendment, the suggestion that ultimately the matter has to be referred to the ICJ is not feasible unless decisions are taken by the governments of both nations to support such a proposal. Putting an amendment in this bill to say that that will happen would, if it became law, probably render the continuation of the unitisation process quite difficult. But let us get back to reality. The opposition believe that the government will simply reject this amendment, and we will not insist on it if the consequences are to delay the project. So I do not think we are going to buy into this argument. We think it is really quite false in relation to what this is about. The opposition when in government will negotiate in good faith with the government of Timor Leste to resolve outstanding issues.

One should understand the consequences that delaying this project might have. That is the issue we should consider at the moment. There was an article in yesterday's Australian on page 26 titled `Qatar pumps up volume on LNG market' by Nigel Wilson, which said:

One of the projects that would lift us to around that level is the Gorgon project, which is not in an area disputed by Timor Leste. All of this LNG coming on the market will have an impact on the commercial viability, saleability and price of LNG in the future, so anything which delays the coming on stream of gas from this project may mean that the project will not go ahead at all if the markets cannot be found. There are markets which are available but, with that amount of LNG coming onto the market from Qatar over the next decade, we cannot be confident that the future will see opportunities to market gas from projects such as this.

I do not believe that the government of Timor Leste want to see this matter delayed. They would appreciate that the consequences of delaying the project are worse than the consequences of proceeding now. The unitisation agreement has their support. We are not going to stand in the way of it coming into effect, nor are we going to stand in the way of the project commencing in a timely fashion, because the risks are probably a lot greater for Timor Leste if we do that. We do not want to take that risk.