Treasury Laws Amendment (Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive) Bill 2017

The majority voted against an amendment introduced by Queensland Senator Andrew Bartlett (Greens), which means it failed.

Amendment text

(1) Schedule 1, item 2, page 7 (line 3), after "petroleum", insert ", thermal coal".*

What did this amendment attempt to do?

Senator Bartlett explained that:

As the bill currently stands—and as we all know this bill will become law fairly soon, as it is going to pass—it exempts the incentive from being made available to exploration or prospecting for petroleum or oil shale. All this amendment seeks to do is to ensure that thermal coal is also exempt from being eligible for this exploration incentive.

The time for coal in Australia is over, and we need to be recognising that. We need to be recognising that we do not need to be putting any more public resources into continuing to explore for new thermal coal deposits. We need to be transitioning away from coal. We need to be ensuring that all of our communities that in the past have had some economic benefit from these industries are able to transition effectively, that the workers are able to transition effectively and the communities are able to be provided with other economic opportunities, many of which are already there and many of which need support and investment to develop more effectively and more sustainably.