Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

This amendment put forward by the Leader of The Nationals, the member for Maranoa, merely aligns the approvals required for industry activities for both gas extraction and carbon sequestration to the same standards, ensuring that, where there is the potential for a significant impact on water resources, the injection and permanent storage of carbon dioxide underground will meet the same scientific standards through the approval process as part of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. That's what we're talking about here.

We just heard a rant from the member for Melbourne. He asks and calls to give him a break. I tell you what: Australian farmers won't just give him a break; they'll give him the food on his table, three times a day every day. He should thank farmers. He shouldn't come into this place, as he and his coterie so often do, and malign our farmers, who are the best in the world. If they were left at the behest of the Greens, our farmers would not even be in existence. We hear so often from the Greens about the Beetaloo basin, about our farmers and about the Murray-Darling Basin. I challenge the member for Melbourne, the Greens leader, and his cohort to actually leave their capital cities, leave the confines of their ivory towers, come into regional Australia and see some real work being done, to see the farmers who, with the sweat of their brows and the work of their hands, are getting dirt under their fingernails to produce the food on limited water.

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