Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

As someone who has lived in Charleville, St George and Moree, it is incredibly important for me that people clearly understand that you have concerns about the water that comes out, but you've also got concerns about what goes in. An unknown quantity is what this can do to the world's largest potable water resource. Without the Great Artesian Basin, you basically have economic devastation everywhere that relies on that water source. You have the capacity to create a toxic plume. You have the capacity to change carbon dioxide; you have a form of mild or carbolic acid that can be created.

We've got to be incredibly cautious about this. It's new technology that's being brought to the fore. It's basically untested and untried. If we don't have a precautionary process now, we won't be able to unwind what happens next. It'll be too late. I remember, and I'm sure the member for Maranoa is aware, when Linc Energy had the great idea to start burning coal underground for the creation of commercial gases. It turned into a complete disaster. It turned into a thing that infected and affected bores all around the area and basically made the place, as far as the groundwater went, a wasteland. We don't want to double up on that.

Now, I acknowledge that there are a few times when we have points of agreement. I acknowledge that, across the chamber, and with the teals and the Greens, there are areas where, generally, you can pick it every day—that they'll be on different sides of the fence. But I ask you, on this one, to really consider this.

I hear that people say that it's a last-minute amendment. The member for Flynn has been working on this for months; I'd say, for—I don't know—even a year. He's been—

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