Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. The New South Wales state government, in a breach of at least the spirit of caretaker conventions, has approved drilling of 110 coal seam gas wells in the Gloucester basin, covering an area of 50 square kilometres and including the pristine Barrington region and key farming land throughout the Gloucester and upper Hunter areas.

This approval was done without any consultation with the water supply authority, MidCoast Water, nor with downstream water users in the Manning Valley, where a population of more than 50,000 residents are reliant on clean drinking water. Will the minister review this decision and make sure that it is done in a detailed consultation with the incoming New South Wales government so that the incoming minister at least gets the chance to start their job without their policy hands tied?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lyne for his question. This is about the Gloucester coal seam gas proposal. I saw the photographs on Twitter of a rally which the member for Lyne participated in, with placards like ‘Save Gloucester’ behind him when he made a speech. There has been a high degree of community concern in many areas relating to coal seam gas proposals and some of that goes to the issues related to the best use of prime agricultural land. I do note, in passing, the legislation introduced today by the Minister for Climate Change on the Carbon Farming Initiative, which will provide a further incentive in favour of prime agricultural land being used for those purposes.

The federal environmental approvals are not able to deal with everything that is dealt with at a state level. They have to deal quite specifically with matters of national environmental significance. The state remit on consideration is often much broader. In 2008 my department determined that this proposal would require an assessment under federal environmental law. The state processes, as I am advised here, were concluded in February of this year. Whether the state government wanted to reopen those would be a matter for the state government; it is not something that I would be able to insist on.

In terms of federal assessment being required, there are consultation mechanisms available to me when the brief does come to me on this as to whether or not we want to have a further level of consultation beyond what has happened already. That is something that I will not prejudge, but will deal with when the brief is presented to me. I presume from the information that I have here that that will not be too far away.

There is one listed vulnerable species and there is a Ramsar listed site in the Hunter estuary, both of which give rise to matters of national environmental significance. They will be considered in the light of the law—the EPBC Act. I expect that brief to come to me before long.