Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 and our further amendments that have been circulated. What we're proposing to do here is include 'carbon sequestration' in the unconventional gas development definition, and to add 'carbon dioxide into water aquifers' to give some protection around Australia's greatest underground water assets. These include the Great Artesian Basin.

I've just heard the minister very piously say that she is protecting properly the water assets of Australia. Now, the minister knows very well that the current EPBC Act offers no protection whatsoever to the waters of the Great Artesian Basin in respect of carbon sequestration. That is because it is not deemed to be a coalmine or a gas operation. The minister knows this very well.

As David Littleproud, the member for Maranoa, has pointed out, in Central Queensland at the moment there is a proposal to possibly pump hundreds of millions of tonnes of industrial waste into the Great Artesian Basin's waters. In their EIS statements, the proponent who is doing this has said that they will compromise the receiving ground water. They have also said that they cannot meet the current environmental protocols surrounding it, of the Queensland government, so they need those environmental authorities changed to be able to proceed.

The minister stood up there and said that she is protecting the underground waters. She is not, and the EPBC Act, as it currently reads, does not do this.

What we are asking here is to include carbon sequestration—the injection of carbon dioxide and these other things into the waters of the Great Artesian Basin, in particular—so as to give those waters some protection in respect of future developments. I urge you all to support these amendments—otherwise, you are just hypocrites.

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