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

It is with pleasure that I speak to the legislation before the House, the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Bill 2011 and cognate bills. I am on the record as having expressed on a number of occasions support for the concept of a rent resource tax. I agree with the position of the Minerals Council of Australia, particularly in relation to the way in which a rent tax works. It works on profits rather than on royalties. There has been a lot of talk about the way in which this particular rent tax has been designed, the way in which the previous superprofits tax was designed, and there has been a lot of politics in terms of how it has all come together.

It is public knowledge—I am sure that most people in the House know—that, even though I had been supportive of the concept of a minerals resource rent tax, I had occasion about a fortnight ago to be very annoyed with one of the major coal seam gas companies, Santos, and the way in which they were trivialising and treating constituents in the electorate of New England on the Liverpool Plains. They acted to put in place a drill hole to test-drill for coal seam gas. They did that in the full knowledge that an independent scientific study was underway—the Namoi Catchment Water Study. The Commonwealth funded that study to the extent of about $1½ million, and BHP, Shenhua and Santos themselves had put some money in to try to gain some independent knowledge about the relationship between the groundwater, the surface water, the flood plain and the Murray-Darling system and what was actually happening in that situation.

When Santos decided to proceed without the full knowledge of the independent study, people in my electorate decided to blockade that development. The day before, I had actually said to Treasurer Wayne Swan on the phone that I was supportive of the minerals resource rent tax. But I was annoyed with the way in which that company—which has generally got a pretty good reputation—treated these people and with the fact that these people had to embark on a blockade process.

Many of the same families, some of whom are in ill health and distress, embarked on a similar process when BHP marched onto the flood plain six years ago, not all that far away. BHP had been granted a licence by a New South Wales minister who had never been there. That minister is currently under investigation by ICAC, I believe. They had been granted this licence, and the minister did not even know the landscape that he had granted the licence over. BHP, with its muscle—and we in this place know about the muscle that it exerts from time to time—marched onto the flood plain and said: 'This is what we are going to do, boys. Welcome.' The community were outraged at the potential impact on water resources, particularly on the flood plain. That would have had an impact on the people in the immediate vicinity, potentially, and also on the interconnected groundwater systems that extend for about 300 kilometres within the Namoi system, and on the way those systems relate to the river system.

I commented on a number of occasions that it was almost an absurdity that, while we in the parliament are trying to design a Murray-Darling plan, we are allowing these activities to occur—not only on the Liverpool Plains but on the Darling Downs and in other parts of Queensland—for example where you reside, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. There were very real concerns about what could happen in relation to water supplies. It was not about whether people were pro or anti mining; it was about whether the appropriate areas were being investigated and about the investigative pressures that the mining companies and the state governments—particularly New South Wales in this case—were under in terms of needing the cash from the exploration licence and potentially the royalties—

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