Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development) Bill 2012

The majority agreed with a motion that: "the committee does not insist on amendments to which the House of Representatives has disagreed and agrees to the amendments made by the House in the place of those amendments."(Read the discussion in the Senate on this motion here. )

In other words, the Senate will not insist on its amendments (numbers 2 and 4 to 13) and will agree to House amendments that were made in their place.(A list of these amendments is available here. ) This means that the bill will be passed in the Senate and can now become law.

The motion was moved by Labor Senator Stephen Conroy.

Debate in Parliament

When the bill was first considered in the Senate, the Senate agreed to two Government and eleven amendments moved by Senators Nick Xenophon, Bill Heffernan, John Madigan, Fiona Nash and Larissa Waters.(A list of all thirteen amendments agreed to in the Senate is available here. The division in which the eleven non-government amendments were agreed to is here. ) These amendments were then sent to the House of Representatives for their consideration.

The House agreed to two of the amendments and made eleven amendments in place of those they disagreed with.(Read the discussion in the House here. )

Background to the bill

The bill establishes an Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development ('the Committee')(Read more about the Committee here. ) to provide federal, state and territory governments with scientific advice on coal seam gas and large coal mining developments which may have significant impacts on water resources.(See here for explanatory memoranda and proposed amendments.)

References