Speaker 1: Perth Airport feels like a mining airport.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The plane you got on when you flew out of
Speaker 1: Perth was full of boots and orange and yellow. You
Speaker 1: get off the airplane, it's hot. You look around, it's red.
Speaker 1: Look in the other direction. Oh, there are these great, big,
Speaker 1: massive plants. They're liquified natural gas plants. It feels high viz.
Speaker 1: It is high viz.
Speaker 2: Greg Bourne works at the Climate Council, but before that
Speaker 2: he was an executive at BP at one point working
Speaker 2: in partnership with Woodside's Northwest Gas Project, one of the
Speaker 2: world's largest liquefied natural gas hubs.
Speaker 1: And then just to the south of Kiatha, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty kilometers or so, about thirty kilometers, I think, is
Speaker 1: this amazing rock art, the petroglyphs that have been there
Speaker 1: for forty five sixty thousand years.
Speaker 2: There are tens of thousands of those ancient rock carvings,
Speaker 2: the Mura Juga petroglyphs, and they're now weathering under a
Speaker 2: haze pollution.
Speaker 1: And that was the decision that Murray what had to make,
Speaker 1: you know, on the environmental grounds and cultural grounds should
Speaker 1: this project go ahead? And he has basically waved it
Speaker 1: through and that then allows Woodside to go to the
Speaker 1: next stage of can we bring in the Browse Basin
Speaker 1: oil fields?
Speaker 2: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM.
Speaker 2: Now that Woodside has won the approval to keep its
Speaker 2: massive craft the gas plant running another forty years, there
Speaker 2: are questions as to whether new gas fields like the
Speaker 2: Browse Basin will be opened up to keep the plant full.
Speaker 2: Today Greg Bourne on lobbying efforts that helped make the
Speaker 2: approval happen and the reform he says would stop future
Speaker 2: fossil fuel behemoths like it from going ahead.
Speaker 3: It's Thursday June five, Greg. Thank you for joining me
Speaker 3: on seven AM. It's great to have you on the show.
Speaker 1: Delightful to be here so Greg.
Speaker 3: The Labor government recently approved the Woodside development, which is
Speaker 3: Australia's largest gas project all the way to twenty seventy.
Speaker 3: Can you just tell me what your first thought was
Speaker 3: when you heard that news.
Speaker 1: My first thought was I can't believe it. The Albanezi
Speaker 1: government have just won an election. Climate change was very important.
Speaker 1: May not have been talked about too much, but very
Speaker 1: important for all of those people who are not baby boomers,
Speaker 1: like me and so I was just so surprised the.
Speaker 4: Life of Australia's largest oil and gas project will be
Speaker 4: extended to twenty seventy with Environment Minister Murray what to
Speaker 4: give the long awaited environmental approval for the Northwest Shelf
Speaker 4: project to be extended beyond twenty thirty.
Speaker 1: The twenty seventy date. Everyone's been talking about Netzer to
Speaker 1: twenty fifty and here we are approving the ability for
Speaker 1: that project to go on till twenty seventy. So shocked, amaze,
Speaker 1: It was like a bombshell.
Speaker 3: Can we interrogate that decision making a little bit more?
Speaker 3: Because the minister had to consider the world's significant rock
Speaker 3: art which is close by. But tell me what other
Speaker 3: considerations he had to make? What wasn't included in the
Speaker 3: decision making process.
Speaker 1: So under the Act that he's operating, he has to
Speaker 1: take into account the environmental effects of flora and fauna,
Speaker 1: but also the cultural heritage. In this particular case, it's
Speaker 1: the rock art. He was not and does not have
Speaker 1: the powers to approve anything with regard to climate change
Speaker 1: global warming emissions. He doesn't have the powers and nor
Speaker 1: should he have the powers to approve a pipeline route
Speaker 1: offshore or the emplacement of the drilling and production platforms.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have those powers. They are held elsewhere. So
Speaker 1: in one sense he could sort of sit back and say, well,
Speaker 1: my hands are tied. I can only do what is
Speaker 1: within the law. He could have, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: spoken to the Prime Minister and said we have a
Speaker 1: problem here, maybe we should delay this decision and maybe
Speaker 1: we should be strengthening the laws. But he did what
Speaker 1: he had to do. You know, yes, minister, he ticked
Speaker 1: the box.
Speaker 2: So this project, we know that it's already one of
Speaker 2: the biggest omitting facilities in the country. So if we
Speaker 2: were to look at this extension, what will it potentially
Speaker 2: mean for Australia's emissions.
Speaker 1: So there's two parts to the emissions. Really, there's a
Speaker 1: part of the emissions which actually occur here in terms
Speaker 1: of drilling gas, some of the escapes and so on.
Speaker 1: So there's those emissions which occur in the country. But
Speaker 1: then there's the emissions that occur when it's sold to Japan,
Speaker 1: Korea and so on. In that case, the overall amount
Speaker 1: of emissions that would go into the the atmosphere over
Speaker 1: that period of time up to twenty seventy from the
Speaker 1: Browse basin is something like four billion tons four billion
Speaker 1: tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is roughly ten times
Speaker 1: the amount of emissions that the whole of Australia, the
Speaker 1: whole of Australia's economy emits in a year. It's vast.
Speaker 1: Now Woodside will be saying, well, we're only being measured
Speaker 1: on what we emit here. Murray what can't actually speak
Speaker 1: about that? But he would have to say the same,
Speaker 1: And of course the Prime Minister has already said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a small amount of emissions here in Australia. But
Speaker 1: the premise basically behind Woodsides making sure they could get
Speaker 1: through this box is to make sure they can get
Speaker 1: through the next box, which is basically development approval pipeline routing.
Speaker 1: So the way I look at it is this and
Speaker 1: coming from my old company BP, the way I look
Speaker 1: at it is Woodside by saying they want to produce
Speaker 1: gas right out to twenty seventy at an even faster
Speaker 1: rate than their now basically says our strategy relies on
Speaker 1: the world's climate talks to either break down or go slow.
Speaker 1: Being rejected by a Trump for example, there'll be another
Speaker 1: one that comes along. It basically is saying we actually
Speaker 1: don't give a stuff about the future our job wherein
Speaker 1: it we an oil company a gas company are in
Speaker 1: an existential crisis. If climate change is really acted upon
Speaker 1: by everyone in the world, we go out of business.
Speaker 3: Talk to me a bit more about the economic argument.
Speaker 1: So the economic argument for the oil and gas producers,
Speaker 1: what they are having to judge is can I produce
Speaker 1: it at a costs and then sell it overseas into
Speaker 1: the market, And can I do that again for a
Speaker 1: bunch of years out to twenty seventy Can I actually
Speaker 1: do that? If it were not to be the case,
Speaker 1: we would stop. But at the moment their view is
Speaker 1: we will be able to set it twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: years out with no problem at all. Well, what does
Speaker 1: it mean for Australia. Well, yes, we get some gas
Speaker 1: tariffs as it were, or resource rent tax comes via
Speaker 1: the gas the companies pay taxes within Australia, but by
Speaker 1: and large, compared with what other countries do and how
Speaker 1: they exploit their gas, we get in Australia a pitanus.
Speaker 1: We struck some extremely bad deals in the mad rush
Speaker 1: to get gas out in the nineteen seventies and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and nineteen nineties. Compared with other countries in the world,
Speaker 1: it's not much of our economy really.
Speaker 3: There's not a huge economic benefit for us.
Speaker 1: No, it's a bonanza for the board and the executive
Speaker 1: and the shareholders who get dividends. It's definitely a bonanza
Speaker 1: for them. We wreak a dis benefit by more weather events,
Speaker 1: whether they be the disastrous floods on the East Coast
Speaker 1: that we've had or the bushfires that we've had, and
Speaker 1: we will see more of those as we go into
Speaker 1: a warmer and warmer world. So in a sense, you know,
Speaker 1: West Australia gets you know, lots of jobs, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: It gets a bit of money, it gets some taxes,
Speaker 1: but by and large we are feeling it. We've had
Speaker 1: floods in Queensland, floods in northern New South Wales, we
Speaker 1: have drought in South Australia. At the moment, you know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty parlous at the moment.
Speaker 2: After the break the lobbying that keeps feeding our gas habit.
Speaker 3: Greg this decision, which would potentially allow the Woodside project
Speaker 3: to continue on for the next few decades it's been
Speaker 3: six years in the making. Tanya PLIVERSECT, the former Environment Minister,
Speaker 3: she put off making that decision twice during her term.
Speaker 3: As someone who has worked in the industry, can you
Speaker 3: enlighten me at all as to the kinds of conversations
Speaker 3: and the kinds of lobbying that would have been happening
Speaker 3: behind the scenes over the past six years in the
Speaker 3: lead up to this approval.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let me start from the woodside point of view,
Speaker 1: oil and gas company point of view. So you drill
Speaker 1: a hole in the ground, you find some gas, you
Speaker 1: work out how much it is, and then you say,
Speaker 1: is this the right time to develop it? And you
Speaker 1: might say no, not now, but let's start working the
Speaker 1: process and we would probably want it to come on
Speaker 1: in twenty thirty or twenty thirty five. And then you
Speaker 1: work year by year, knowing that you're not going to
Speaker 1: develop it now, but that you might want to develop
Speaker 1: in the future if the price is are right. So,
Speaker 1: in terms of how you think about these projects, you
Speaker 1: know that you're going to go through a labor government
Speaker 1: in Western Australia, a liberal government in West Australia, coalition
Speaker 1: at the federal level, a labor one at the federal level,
Speaker 1: and basically you walk the corridors of power and you
Speaker 1: lobby with politicians, You lobby with junior public servants who
Speaker 1: in ten years time are senior public servants, and you
Speaker 1: build a relationship so that it becomes if you like,
Speaker 1: the inertia over time is of course it's going to
Speaker 1: go ahead. You know, we've been talking about this for
Speaker 1: twenty five years, so of course it's going to go ahead.
Speaker 1: And that mental model is, oh, it's an extensible resource.
Speaker 1: We AUSTRAYA do well at that. And we've done it
Speaker 1: in iron, we've done it in gold, we're doing it
Speaker 1: in box site. You know, we dig it and ship it.
Speaker 1: So that's what you do at supply and at the
Speaker 1: demand end. If you want to keep going, then the
Speaker 1: argument you make, and wouldside have been making this argument
Speaker 1: for since nineteen ninety six, is that gas is good.
Speaker 1: It will help you get off coal, it'll help you
Speaker 1: clean up your cities. They don't say it will slow
Speaker 1: down the introduction of renewable energy within your country. They
Speaker 1: don't say. If it's a nuclear country, they don't say
Speaker 1: it will slow down the expansion of your nuclear power stations.
Speaker 1: If there is what you have Japan, Korea, China for example,
Speaker 1: doesn't say that at all. No, it is we want
Speaker 1: to sell to you.
Speaker 3: Which brings us where we are at today. Given that,
Speaker 3: then is it really down to governments to change the
Speaker 3: legislation that they consider when they're deciding whether or not
Speaker 3: to approve projects like this?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Absolutely so. I think the Albanezi government have got
Speaker 1: around about three months in which to signal to Australia
Speaker 1: and indeed signal to the world, that they're going to
Speaker 1: accelerate their action on climate change. And some of that
Speaker 1: would be seen, for example as bringing in legislation to
Speaker 1: Parliament with regard to a climate trigger, whether it's in
Speaker 1: a current Act or a future Act or whatever else,
Speaker 1: that they're actually going to do that. The reason I
Speaker 1: say three months is because Australia also wants to host
Speaker 1: in Adelaide and in the region COP thirty one, and
Speaker 1: they want to do that with the Pacific countries as well.
Speaker 1: A decision was expected to be made in June but
Speaker 1: has to been made by the end of September, and
Speaker 1: already we are hearing from the Indo Pacific countries that
Speaker 1: hang on, what are you guys in Australia doing do
Speaker 1: you actually care about us? Going under? What do you
Speaker 1: care about? Climate change? They understand, they're smart, They understand
Speaker 1: the decision that Murray WHATTT had to take, and they
Speaker 1: also understand the importance it sends with regard to are
Speaker 1: we going to develop more and more gas and oil
Speaker 1: coal and just keep going on out to twenty seventy.
Speaker 1: The twenty seventy, as I come back to the beginning,
Speaker 1: is the big shock. So that's what people will be
Speaker 1: looking for.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Will the Albanezi government in this next three months begin
Speaker 1: to start signaling that they're going to be tackling climate change,
Speaker 1: tackling it hard and actually going to put some legislation
Speaker 1: behind it.
Speaker 3: And what impact would a climate trigger have?
Speaker 1: The climate trigger would be basically saying, right, okay, you
Speaker 1: are producing emissions, and then you are actually trying to
Speaker 1: reduce not only the emissions that we have within Australia,
Speaker 1: but you are working all along the supply chain to
Speaker 1: the customer trying to help them reduce their emissions because
Speaker 1: Japan has to reduce its submissions. Carea does as well,
Speaker 1: China does it, someone like that. But if all you're
Speaker 1: doing is feeding a habit, and I have been known
Speaker 1: to say that we push our products with the zeal
Speaker 1: of a drug lord. You know, you have a supplier,
Speaker 1: you have a consumer. And unless you tackle that chain
Speaker 1: from both ends deliberatively trying to reduce emissions here where
Speaker 1: we have real control over it, and also control those
Speaker 1: emissions when you sell them into Japan or elsewhere. Unless
Speaker 1: you're doing it diligently along the totality of the supply chain,
Speaker 1: you're just consuming the habit.
Speaker 3: Greg, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ruby. I enjoyed chatting.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, accused triple murderer Erin Patterson
Speaker 2: has given her account of how she made a beef
Speaker 2: Wellington dish that resulted in the deaths of three relatives
Speaker 2: and made another seriously ill. Miss Patterson has pleaded not
Speaker 2: guilty to all charges. Giving evidence in her murder trial,
Speaker 2: Miss Patterson told the court she accepted the meal contained
Speaker 2: death cap mushrooms, saying she repaired the dish using mushrooms
Speaker 2: she believed or purchased from a grosser, but considered they
Speaker 2: may have been foraged and oppositionally to Susan Lee says
Speaker 2: she'll work with the federal government to secure Australia an
Speaker 2: exemption from higher US steel tariffs. US President Donald Trump
Speaker 2: has signed an executive order to double tariffs on imported
Speaker 2: steel and aluminium from twenty five to fifty percent. The
Speaker 2: UK has negotiated an exemption from the increase in Susan
Speaker 2: Lee says she would assist the government in negotiating to
Speaker 2: get the same result. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 2: See tomorrow Man and