ANNE TWOMEY: Maybe I'll start. The one thing that did strike me...

ANNE TWOMEY: Maybe I'll start. The one thing that did strike me as potentially an issue was in
relation to 103A (1) (c) which says that a Minister must not grant a pipeline licence for construction of a pipeline
across coastal waters of the State. On its face that seems fine, but I note, again, that provision in the Coastal Waters
(State Title) Act that confers rights on the States in relation to the coastal waters, subject to a right of the
Commonwealth to authorise the construction and use of pipelines for the transport across the seabed of petroleum.
That, of course, leaves everything still—I was going to say up in the air—under the water. It still leaves it all open
because, to the extent that if there is no legislation currently in existence at the Commonwealth level—if there is
none and, again, I'm not an expert on this—at the moment about laying pipelines across coastal State waters, and
if the Commonwealth legislation just deals with the offshore stuff, then there is no inconsistency in that provision
in there.
But if, on a future occasion, the Commonwealth did decide to execute a power to do that, this particular
qualification would suggest that the State's ability to act to stop that would be limited. Again, this is just talking
about the State Minister approving a licence. In those circumstances, it would presumably be the Commonwealth
Minister approving a licence under Commonwealth legislation, and so the State Minister not approving it would
probably be irrelevant anyway. But I just wanted to point out that there is a lurking concern about the pipelines
over the coastal water areas of the State in case the Commonwealth, in the future, decided to exercise its powers
there, because I think it could as a consequence of that exclusion in the Coastal Waters (State Title) Act. But
again, we're just talking about possibilities way off in the future; we're not talking about current conflicts.