Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development) Bill 2012 and to follow the member for Kennedy, who gave a bit of history of his own family and his background in western and central western Queensland. I welcome the opportunity to follow the member for Riverina, as well.

I can say that I too come to this debate with a great deal of experience, because my family lived in western Queensland long before many of the towns were even gazetted as towns. In fact, in the case of my own home town of Roma, my family went there prior to its being gazetted as a town. They settled there and I certainly grew up with an appreciation of the importance of water. My home town of Roma was where the first oil was discovered in Australia. In fact, it is still a very big hub for the natural gas that was discovered in our region.

So I come to this debate with an enduring interest, not only in the resource sector and what it can do for our regional economies but also in making sure that we get the balance right and get right the legislation and regulations governing the mining operations of the companies that extract this coal seam methane gas.

This Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development) Bill is certainly timely. I also acknowledge that it has the bipartisan support of both sides of the House. I acknowledge the member for New England who is here. He was raising these sorts of concerns in his area and, along with other people, I was one of those voicing protests in our own areas.

I acknowledged, all the time, that it is the state governments that have the overriding constitutional responsibility for the regulation and operation of our resources. The Commonwealth has very limited powers, and one of the powers it has is in the approval process. Our interests are limited really to environment and biodiversity issues associated with mining approvals.

So I do welcome this bill. It is important that this bill provides the support that we need to give communities confidence that these new developments—such as the open cut coalmining industry and the coal seam methane gas—are safe and that, as it moves into more closely settled areas, as opposed to the vast areas of the Cooper Basin in my electorate, it is sustainable, and that there is a much happier coexistence than we have seen as these industries have become established in the Surat Basin in my electorate. This bill will establish an independent expert scientific committee on coal seam gas and large coal developments. What I want to ensure is that when the panel is established it is not just loaded with scientists, because I can assure this House that if it is just scientists that make up this panel the communities will not have confidence in the committee. As well-meaning, well-resourced and well-credentialed as scientists may be, it is important to get a balance of people on this committee—as I believe it always is. It is important to include people who have an understanding of communities, of the environment, of the way the aquifers work and how they recharge, and, of course, of the importance of them to the people of the outback of Queensland and many parts of Australia. The Great Artesian Basin is not just in Queensland; it crosses into South Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales. So, when this panel is established, it is important that it has a balance of people, not just scientists, providing advice to the minister. It is important that we get the confidence of the communities, who have been a very strong voice of protest, and that we get the regulations right for the coal seam methane gas operations, particularly, and for the open coalmining operations as they move into more closely settled areas and prime agricultural land.

The coal seam industry in my region has been growing from the very early trials that they did in about 1995-96. It was Tri-Star, from America, that started to develop the method for identifying whether these coal seams would provide coal seam methane gas and how it would be extracted. Once they had established that it was possible they, Sunshine Star and a lot of other companies onsold a lot of their tenements to larger companies.

The other part of the problem in the establishment of this industry is that companies who had been granted tenements to explore for coal seam methane gas were taking for granted access to landholders' properties. They were cowboys. They were probably $2 shelf companies, with a computer in an office somewhere. They subcontracted to drillers. They believed they had a divine right to go onto landholders' land to look for coal seam methane gas, prove up a particular volume of gas in their tenement and then onsell it for a lot of money to a major company, who would then amalgamate the work that had been done by the subcontractors and cowboys—as we like to describe them in our area.

We had instances where these cowboys would just cut through people's fences and put old cockies' gates behind them, leave gates open and come in night and day, bringing vehicles onto properties that might have had Parthenium weed and other noxious plants that people spent hundreds of thousands of dollars controlling. The Commonwealth spent millions of dollars on control of these invasive weeds, and these cowboys did not have the respect that landholders had for this land.

Largely, I am happy to say, I think we have weeded out the cowboys and the regulations through the voice of protest. But we have seen what the previous government in Queensland and New South Wales have done—more particularly in Queensland, because I believe in Queensland we are much further advanced in the development of the coal seam methane gas industry than the southern states are. We are so much further advanced that quite a lot of the gas now that is used in cooking and power generation in Queensland comes from coal seam methane gas. In fact, 30 per cent of Queensland's gas consumption is from coal seam methane gas. I have two or three coal seam methane gas power stations in my area. One is a 125-megawatt plant at Miles, and another is a 750-megawatt plant in Braemar—combined-cycle, baseload coal power as well as peak-load coal seam methane gas power. It is very clean energy. When I see a coal-fired power station and a gas-fired power station, when it comes to the visual pollution, I would rather have a gas-fired power station than a coal-fired one any day. It is cleaner energy and there is less visual pollution in the landscape. Of course, when it comes to open cut coalmines, with the scar they leave on the landscape, as opposed to gas wells, there is no comparison.

I am certainly a great supporter, providing we get this right. We have to make sure landholders' rights are protected. I have family involved in this who are going to have gas wells on their property. I know their right to negotiate is absolute, but it has not been easy—notwithstanding the new regulations that are in place. So I come to this with family involvement in dealing with gas companies. I come to the debate having to deal with constituents with very real issues with the legacy left behind by the cowboys that were out there earlier, including pumping stations within 100 metres of family homes—things that are no longer allowed.

I will talk a little bit about the Great Artesian Basin because I have had a lot of practical experience in the Great Artesian Basin. On our own property we have had a free-flowing bore. When I was only a small kid we used to ride past this free-flowing bore in the winter on our ponies on our way to school. We would pull up and put our hands under the lovely warm water to warm our hands and then get back on our ponies and ride on to school. It sounds like it was a long time ago, and it was. But, after 56 years of free-flowing bores—the member for Kennedy, to his credit, did mention these free-flowing bores—that one stopped. Why? Because of the 4,500 free-flowing bores that went into the Hutton Sandstone and the Precipice Sandstone. When they were formed, 250 million years ago, the water just flowed down bore drains—98 per cent of the water was lost and two per cent was utilised. But the basin did open up the pastoral industry. It was seen as a way of developing the land out there, and it has done so. I am very pleased to see that since the mid-1990s we have had a program—funded by state and federal governments—to cap many of these bores. I would like to see that accelerated. I would like to think that we have a goal in the next five years of having every free-flowing artesian bore, from the artesian basin, capped. We can then continue to repressurise those bores. It will not run out in the near future but we have seen a third of them stop flowing since the first one went in, in the 1890s, at Bourke in western New South Wales.

The industry is important—if we get it right. This committee will have a huge responsibility in giving confidence to landholders, communities and members of parliament. This committee, this panel of experts and people with practical experience, are going to be a check in the state government's regulatory process for providing extraction permits.

In my electorate, coal seam methane gas extraction throughout the basin is going to produce something like 18,000 jobs. There is going to be something like $800 million worth of royalty money coming in every year to the state government, not the federal government. We need to make sure that this money goes back to development in those regions—for roads, social and health infrastructure or affordable housing. We need to make sure it is not just a transfer of wealth from the Surat Basin to our capital cities east of the dividing range. Those communities out there—local councils and small businesses—are under enormous pressure because of the goldmine mentality out at the moment. It is a boom.

I will describe the boom in another way. My home town of Roma is the epicentre of the Surat Basin at its western end. We have gone from one flight a day, from Brisbane to Roma, to six flights a day. In the last 12 months we have had up to 60,000 people flying through the Roma Airport. In the next 12 months 100,000 people are estimated to fly through that airport. It gives you some idea of the massive growth, the new wealth, that has come in. The subcontractors are getting a start in life. They are coming from many parts of Australia.

But it has put enormous pressure on existing businesses in affording staff. That is why the 457 visa process for workers sponsored in by companies is an important element. It makes sure that we can keep those small businesses—the traditional businesses—in business and able to afford labour. They should not have to compete with what the resource companies are paying to source labour—so they can drive the coal seam methane gas industry—to get the developments online, on target, delivering LNG out of Gladstone by 2015 and 2016. That has been their imperative, but it has put enormous pressure on our existing industries. Part of the reason we had such a voice of protest from landholders was this imperative; part was the way that landholders were being treated. They wanted to get the job done. It caused a huge division across my communities.

The Longreach Leader today said that out of Blackall we have a mining company opening up the possibility of open-cut coalmines. Blackall and those western Queensland towns are old wool towns and many of them have halved in population since the decline of the wool industry. It is the resource sector that gives those country towns an opportunity and a hope that they can once again be wonderful towns and grow to their former glory of the wool days and get a new growth in population. It will be the resource sector in the Galilee Basin that will give those communities an opportunity to grow. (Time expired)

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