Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Let there be light! Tamworth, as you would recognise, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, was the first community to get electric lights. It celebrated 100 years of electric lights the other day. I know you will be pleased to know that. But if you are serious about climate change and some of the environmental areas that we talk about in this place, the message has to be consistent. You cannot say: ‘Biofuels? We’ll treat them the same as petrol and diesel because we’ve got problems with those and they are a very good source of taxation. We get about $14 billion a year from them—we can’t really afford the revenue loss. So now we’ve gone through this little aspirational target arrangement in terms of biofuels. When we come out the other end of that, we’ll whack the tax back on.’ That sends a negative message. I would encourage the member for Ryan and other members of the government to have a close look at that, because there has to be a consistent message.

I think policy is about messages and penalties. This legislation is partly about penalties for people who do not concur with the policy message, but there are all these other signals out there as well. There is also the lack of research that has gone into solar, wind, tidal and geothermal areas. The government has gone straight to nuclear as a solution. I strongly disagree with that and so do the constituents of my electorate of New England. We recently did a survey, to which 3,000 people responded, and found that 67 per cent were opposed to nuclear power plants anywhere in Australia. I did not ask the question as to whether they wanted one next door to them; I guess that would have escalated the number. I think that probably encapsulates the feelings of most people. Of those who were concerned, even those who were supportive of nuclear energy being used, many said that they wanted other options explored first and talked about research into geothermal.

We are doing very little as a nation to encourage that natural source of heat and generation of energy. I know there are problems, but problems are made to be overcome. We are talking about 20 years before we move to nuclear, so there will be problems getting there—if we ever get there. I know there are problems with solar and wind and baseload energy sources. But problems are made to be solved. That is why you have research and encourage people to get in there and work out the solutions.

I listened with interest to the member for Ryan discussing people in his electorate who have solar energy business. I congratulate them. They are mostly at the small business end—people who are innovative. They receive some assistance from the government, with various grants here and there, but we have to encourage them to really want to get out there. Just at the weekend, in Armidale, I was asked to open an energy-neutral display home under the auspices of a family company called New England Solar Power, which is similar to those the member for Ryan talked about.

The home is energy neutral. It has solar power, solar heating and all the other design and architectural features utilise natural heat et cetera. Obviously, there are solar panels on the roof and a whole range of other things, but there is one very interesting thing that this family—I will name them, Rob and Sally Taber and their daughter, Fiona—have developed. Their daughter has been an inspiration in driving this initiative. She is almost paranoid about getting the solution right. These are the sorts of people we really need and we should be assisting them. One of the real innovations in this particular home was the way in which they designed a solar heating system with a very low energy usage pump to push hot air through the home. People were just amazed when they walked into a particular room where the heat was coming through. It was not a particularly hot day in Armidale—Armidale is not a particularly hot town—but the reactions that people had were amazing. The Tabers did receive some federal government assistance and they were very appreciative of that, but I think we have to be out there encouraging those sorts of people.

There is talk at the moment of a new power station in New South Wales. I am not opposed to the coal industry; I have a coalmine next door to me. It is a very good coalmine and I appreciate the employment opportunities it generates for people, but I think there are some real questions that need to be answered in relation to the $8 billion being spent on a new power station in New South Wales. If we are moving towards some of the things that the member for Ryan was talking about and the New England solar people are talking about—transferring energy usage and becoming more efficient in what we are doing—we may not need the sort of baseload power that would come from a new $8 billion coal power station in New South Wales. They are the sorts of things that I think we need to have a close look at.

The carbon debate is one that I think most people are still coming to grips with, and this legislation establishes a bit of a framework for the starting point. I was very disappointed—and I raised this with the Prime Minister in question time and did not receive an adequate answer—that the farm sector was not included in the carbon task force, because I think there are a number of areas where agriculture can play a valuable role. I know it is in its infancy, I know there are difficulties in measuring carbon in soil and I know that, if you are going to establish a trading framework, you need something tangible to trade with et cetera, but there are people in Australia who are getting right on top of these particular issues now.

At the University of New England, for instance, Dr Christine Jones has done an enormous amount of work on pasture improvement and the use of improved pastures and improved soil management by way of humus and organic matter accumulation being a natural carbon sink. I have been involved personally for many years with what is called no-till farming, where, instead of ploughing the land or burning the residue, the residue is left on top of the soil. Over a period of time, not only do you get structural and textural benefits for the soil and benefits in the moisture infiltration rate through natural channels et cetera in the soil, you also accumulate a greater degree of humus and organic matter. I know the nay-sayers will say, ‘Not all Australian soils are heavy in organic matter,’ and they are not. The deserts are not, so you cannot do it there. You are not going to have a natural carbon sink in the desert, but we do have a lot of very good soils and, if we encourage better soil management through incentives and incorporate the carbon debate in that management, we end up with a whole range of other benefits as well. Not only are the structural, textural and infiltration issues that I spoke about earlier addressed but erosion issues are also addressed. You end up with better soils, a more viable landmass, a more profitable farm sector and a whole range of positives. The farm sector was completely left out of the debate.

There is a lot of information around the world at the moment about the development of natural carbon sinks in the soil. We have been talking about it for years with regard to trees and encouraging people to plant trees. Why? One of the reasons is that you help stop the salinity problem, which is good, and you accumulate some airborne carbon in a natural sink. Our soils can do that as well through changes in land management, but we are doing nothing at a policy level to encourage those sorts of things. We will spend billions of dollars, and we have rolled money out to the states for water quality programs and salinity issues et cetera over the last 10 years, and very little return has been generated for better soil health and some of the other water and salinity issues that we often talk about. I encourage the government to start talking to some of these people.

I was in the United States last year and there are carbon trades taking place there now based on no-till technology. There are those who say that you cannot measure carbon in soils or the improvement in soils over a period of time and that therefore you do not have something to sell and it is very hard to price, and yet other parts of the world are finding ways and means to do it. No-one is suggesting this is going to be easy—the legislation we are debating today is not easy, and it is establishing a framework—but surely, if we are going to go through all these various companies and the big emitters et cetera, we should be looking at soil management and farm management as part of that process. There are varying degrees of scientific view as to how much of the carbon problem could be solved through some of these changes to our land management over time, not just the planting of trees.

The other issues that I would raise are in relation to the processes that are being put in place now to deal with decision making on major developments and the impacts that those major developments may or may not have on other environmental issues. The one that is popular at the moment is the Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania.

People in my electorate and in the neighbouring electorate have an issue with groundwater. Many people have heard me talk from time to time about the groundwater debate and I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, must be sick of hearing me talk about it. It is very important in our area because there are a series of groundwater systems that are interlinked and are linked to the surface water systems. Now we have the Commonwealth moving into the Murray-Darling Basin system and putting a plan together where they are going to gauge how these interlinked mechanisms work and then come up with a water budget, in a sense, and determine some allocations, perhaps by buying back licences et cetera. I think we are all aware of that debate that is going to take place.

Currently, in an area near Caroona, which is only about 20 kilometres from where I live, BHP are proposing a massive coalmine. It is a 500 million tonne potential operation—a big coalmine. I know the member for Paterson would recognise that that is a big coalmine. There are possible problems. I say ‘possible’ because I do not condemn coalmining. I think we have to move more quickly in tidying up some of the emissions, but I think we can do that if we do more research. The problem I have with this particular proposal is that it is a proposal to put a massive coalmine in an area that is surrounded by very high water bearing gravels. There are interlinked aquifers for probably 200 kilometres. I have been urging, from time to time, the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources to put in place an independent survey—not of this particular mine but to use it as an example—of the potential impact of longwall coalmining in heavy water bearing gravels and what that does in terms of the hydrogeology and hydraulics of the system. If you put a trench across a vein—inadvertently or deliberately—what does that do in terms of the hydraulics of an interlinked system? I do not know the answer to that, and neither does anybody in the world. I would urge the minister to really have a serious look at this.

The reason I mentioned Gunns is that I think the processes are very similar. The proponents of both the Gunns and the BHP proposals have to go through a state based process. I think the Gunns process has verged on being corrupt. It is not a good process at all. The Chief Scientist is reviewing that now for the minister. I congratulate the minister for the environment for pulling this thing up. But make sure you have a good look at it and do not put the Chief Scientist in an invidious position where he has to approve it for political reasons when there is a whole range of procedural matters. Exactly the same issue is arising in the Caroona coal proposal. It is a state based process. The minister tells me from time to time, ‘It is a state based process.’ We know that, Minister, but we also know that under the various biodiversity legislative arrangements the Commonwealth does have some say, and that is what the minister has triggered in the Gunns situation, with the Chief Scientist coming into play.

So the Commonwealth can have a role, and in the Murray-Darling system it should have a role. It should have a much greater role in determining whether these sorts of things actually do go ahead. I am not suggesting they should not go ahead. I am not a rabid greenie. What I am saying is that there should be a process which people understand, which is transparent and which does not leave any lasting damage. If we are serious about climate change and all these other things, we have got to get serious about that particular procedural mechanism. Otherwise you have these state based processes in which people have very little confidence, and when you come to the Commonwealth proposing a broader framework people give up in disgust, do not trust the system or become very cynical.

In conclusion, I reiterate—and I would like to inform my electorate—that I would not be able to support the use of nuclear energy. I do not feel as though I could support something that could create waste problems thousands of years in front of us. It is all very well for people to say: ‘Central Australia is very safe. You can store it there.’ We do not know what can happen in 10,000 years time. Personally, I would rather accept 1½ or two degrees more in temperature than be a proponent of a waste management system that probably will not affect any of us but may well affect many generations to come.

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