Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move the amendment circulated in my name:

(1) Schedule 1, item 4, page 5 (after line 2), after subsection 505C(5), insert:

(6) The Minister must also ensure that a majority of the members possess scientific qualifications and expertise in one or more of the following areas:

  (a) geology;

  (b) hydrology;

  (c) hydrogeology;

  (d) ecology.

As I said in my comments when I spoke on the bill, the coalition supports the establishment of this expert panel, and the amendment here is being supported by the minister. There is certainly no doubt that, as the member for Lyne just said, science needs to be at the heart of the process. Too much of the debate has been dragged backwards and forwards by statements that are less than accurate, to say the least.

The most important thing in this process as we exploit those resources—which, as the member for Maranoa said, have the potential not only to provide jobs and income for the economy but just as importantly to provide jobs in communities which have seen an economic decline in the past—is that the community, the custodians of the land, in particular the farmers in Queensland and New South Wales and wherever else this industry expands to, have confidence in the process. There must be confidence in the process. We need to depoliticise the process. We need to take out of the process those things where those who for their own political gain are attempting to confuse the topic.

So establishing an expert panel, establishing the wherewithal behind that panel in the money that the Commonwealth is making available, is all part of ensuring that the community has confidence in this process. We do need to collate an absolute myriad information that is out there. Some of it is peer reviewed, some of it is not. Some of it is, therefore, accurate and some of it may not be accurate. We need to collate that information and where the deficiencies are identified in that information then do the research.

The coalition have moved this amendment, which, as I understand it, will be supported by the government. Our only aim in this is to ensure that that scientific panel has the very best expertise to ensure that it does the very best job for the responsibility that it is charged with. If it does that, everyone will benefit from it. The ability of the two industries to coexist is important—that is, primary industry or agriculture and also the resource or gas industry; the protection, most importantly, of the aquifers to preserve that most precious resource, which is of course water; and at the same time ensure that the land is able to, as much is physically possible at the time, but at the end of the extraction, be returned to its original productivity. It is very important in terms of us not only feeding our nation but our ongoing responsibility we will have to feed the world that we retain the productivity of our land. As an ex-farmer—and, once you are a farmer, you are always going to be a farmer; I still sniff the air when I go out in the bush—I want to see that happen and the coalition want to see that happen.

I commend the amendment to the House. We, as I say, will support the legislation when it comes forward.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to thank members for the support for this legislation. I recognise the member for Groom and the amendment that the opposition is introducing. Essentially, I think the bill incorporates pretty much what you are suggesting, but you are spelling it out a little bit more than maybe the bill does. I hope the minister is supportive because I think it would be a very good thing if this particular piece of legislation got through the parliament with a united approach. It is critical, and the member for Groom made the point that we have appropriate assessment. I take on board what the member for Maranoa said when he suggested that we want to make sure that this is not just a talkfest of scientists, that there is some degree of community input. I thought his contribution was very good as well. This is in stark contrast to the situation some years ago when there was division on this very issue, on the need for independent scientific assessment in terms of risk and knowledge and cumulative impact on landscape. So in a number of years we have come quite a long way.

I remember a similar debate in the Senate, which the member for Groom would also remember, where there was a change of heart overnight and the coalition members, particularly the National Party at the time, recanted their vote the very next day after making glorious speeches about how they had been able to deliver a scientific process to look at these very issues in some of the lands that we are still talking about today. So progress has been made.

The Minerals Council back in 2008—the member for Groom would remember this as well—made the point through their environmental officer, Melanie Stutsel, who is still there, that there should be some form of bioregional assessment process engaged in before exploration licences are granted, so that we have some idea of what the landscape can accept. I think that has been taken up through the national partnerships agreement that the minister and the Prime Minister have been involved with and that is reflected very much in the independent scientific analysis. The money for that analysis, the $200 million that allows this to go forward, is in fact money that has come out of the minerals resource rent tax. In the very kindest of ways, I remind the member for Kennedy that he did not support that funding base. I believe he is going to try to amend it today and I will be interested to listen to his contribution.

The $150 million of funding will go towards the risk assessment process, the cumulative process. I think all of us want to know about that, irrespective of which catchment we live in. I take the point, which I think was made by the member for Groom, that none of us are against development. We just want to make sure that it is risk free or, if there are risks, that we prioritise our better agricultural lands, particularly where water is involved, and that we get it right prior to taking risks.

In relation to gas in New South Wales, the gas companies themselves ran an advertising campaign some months back where they made the point that within New South Wales there was enough gas to power Sydney for 5,000 years. The point I made in relation to that was: well, what's the hurry? Why don't we get this right—get the science right and make the assessment process one where there is a degree of objectivity rather than political platitudes and decision making based on the income of the state or the politics of the day? Five thousand years is a long time. If we lose a few at the start in getting the process right, I think the people in 5,000 years may well thank us.

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

I will not hold up the House. The intention of the opposition's amendment is a pretty close match to how we had envisaged the committee operating. The concept of putting that in and formalising it in the bill is, I think, a good suggestion and I thank the opposition for the consultative way in which the drafting has taken place.

Question agreed to.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move the amendment circulated in my name:

(1) Schedule 1, page 8 (after line 9), at the end of the Schedule, add:

12 Aquifer drilling—12 month moratorium

(1) A person commits an offence if:

(a) the person takes an action; and

(b) the person takes the action for the purposes of, or in connection with, coal seam gas extraction; and

(c) the action is, or results in, drilling through or into an aquifer; and

(d) the drilling occurs within 12 months after the commencement of this item.

Penalty:

(a) for an individual—$200,000; and

(b) for a body corporate—$2,000,000.

(2) Subitem (1) applies only if:

(a) the person is a corporation to which paragraph 51(xx) of the Constitution applies; or

(b) the action is taken for the purposes of trade or commerce:

(i) between Australia and another country; or

(ii) between 2 States; or

(iii) between a State and a Territory; or

(iv) between 2 Territories; or

(c) the action is taken in a Territory.

(3) Subitem (1) does not apply if the action is taken to facilitate safer coal mining.

(4) This item has effect despite any provision of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 or any other Act.

The amendment is pretty simple, really. It says that we should have a year's moratorium. The honourable member for New England has criticised me for opposing the $150 million. I do not mean to be disrespectful but $150 million to do this study is, in my opinion, a waste of taxpayers' money of indecent proportions, to be quite frank with you. If you want to know the science of it, I will explain it to you outside. You laugh, but if you had taken the time to find out a little bit about the gases that are inherent and their effect in an aquifer then you would know that it is inherently dangerous, my friend. And, if you had listened, what I said earlier on is that if you have casing it is only as good as how long it is going to last. You would know, as I do—both of us coming from the country—that bore casing, whether it is plastic or something else, is not going to last all that long because there are movements in the ground all the time.

I think I should have moved for two years rather than one year, and I agree with the criticism from the honourable member behind me on this issue. If you are saying that we need money to do some scientific research, I would agree with the member for New England. I applaud him and thank him, as I have done publicly and privately on the issue. As to whether it should be money of that dimension: no, I am sorry, I have always been a person that is very tight-fisted with government money. My many years in the ministries would attest to my frugality and I will not be apologising to anyone for that. Actually, I am quite proud of it.

As for the amendment being moved here, firstly, it is no use doing the scientific research whilst they are out there drilling holes through the aquifer. You stop the drilling. And until you do stop it for scientific research, whether you consider it necessary to the extent of $150 million or whether you consider it necessary to the extent of a few million dollars, which would be my position, we will argue that. But the thing that should not be argued is that they are out there drilling the holes without the scientific knowledge belonging to the member for New England or the minister or the government. I think that is grossly irresponsible. I fully agree with the honourable member behind me here in saying that there should be a moratorium until that scientific work is done and assessed.

The second issue is that, quite frankly, I just do not think the risks taken by drilling through the aquifers are justified—and we are talking about the artesian aquifers. I take the minister's point that there is great argument about whether the aquifers, which we call the Great Artesian Basin, are interconnected or whether they are not. I put on the table my scientific evidence that Spring Creek runs for 82 kilometres west of Boulia in arguably the hottest, driest place on earth—though San Fernando in California would argue otherwise, and there is another place in South America and one part of Africa. It is as hot and dry as any climate on earth. To be able to get a creek to run for 82 kilometres an awful lot of water has to be coming out. I just do not think that that amount of water would come unless the aquifers were interconnected, and I can present an awful lot of other evidence to that effect. So I just do not believe that we should be drilling through the aquifers.

Quite frankly, the aquifers in my area, the Great Artesian Basin, are at 1,500 feet. Surely you can find a lot of gas without having to go down below 1,500 feet. Also, because it is an aquifer, it has to have an impervious layer above it and an impervious layer below it, otherwise it is not an aquifer. The impervious layer below it is generally accepted as bedrock. I do not know—it is going to cost a lot to go through bedrock, and I would not have thought the chance of finding stuff beneath would be particularly good. We have people out there drilling holes. It looks good on a prospectus, and they will have a lot of gobbledegook scientific jargon in the prospectus. Quite frankly, we have a name for it in the bush but I cannot use that name here. (Time expired)

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

The government will not be supporting the amendment that has been moved by the member for Kennedy. In our view this bill is about improving the base level of scientific knowledge. In all the public statements and in all the decisions of government, our view is that the approval standards should not change; they should simply be better informed. That is what the bill does. That is what the money funds, and that is what we believe should be the consideration before the parliament.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the member for Kennedy's amendment be agreed to.

A division having been called and the bells having been rung—

As there are fewer than five members on the side for the ayes, I declare the question resolved in the negative in accordance with standing order 127. The names of those members who are in the minority will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.

Question negatived, Mr Katter, Mr Bandt and Mr Wilkie voting aye.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

(1) Schedule 1, page 8 (after line 9), at the end of the Schedule, add:

12 Aquifer drilling—moratorium

(1) A person commits an offence if:

(a) the person takes an action; and

(b) the person takes the action for the purposes of, or in connection with, coal seam gas mining; and

(c) the action is, or results in, drilling through or into an aquifer; and

(d) the drilling occurs before the earliest of the following:

(i) 5 years from the commencement of this item;

(ii) the conclusion of the full 5-year research program of the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development.

Penalty: 2,000 penalty units.

(2) Subitem (1) applies only if:

(a) the person is a corporation to which paragraph 51(xx) of the Constitution applies; or

(b) the action is taken for the purposes of trade or commerce:

(i) between Australia and another country; or

(ii) between 2 States; or

(iii) between a State and a Territory; or

(iv) between 2 Territories; or

(c) the action is taken in a Territory.

(3) Subitem (1) does not apply if the action is taken to facilitate scientific research to better understand the interaction of groundwater systems and the impact on those systems of coal seam gas mining.

(4) This item has effect despite any provision of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 or any other Act.

I will speak only briefly to this. When the bill passes to the other place, Senator Larissa Waters, who has been so actively involved in the campaign in Queensland, and Senator Rhiannon from New South Wales are going to speak more fulsomely. I first of all acknowledge the efforts of the member for New England in bringing this legislation to this place. A lot is said about minority parliaments, but one of the reasons that minority parliaments get outcomes is that issues that might otherwise go into the too-hard basket or might not find their way onto the agenda because of the role that certain vested interests have—such as in development, in agriculture and mining—can be brought out and debated.

Although there are a number of ways the Greens could suggest this bill would be improved—I will go through some of the things we would do, and what we have put before the parliament that we think would be better solution—I just want to acknowledge the debate and the hubbub about this current parliament. People are going to look back on this parliament at the time of the next election and acknowledge it has been a time of great reform and some significant gains. It is good that we are now having a national debate about coal seam gas.

The amendment that I am proposing is to impose a moratorium of sufficient length to allow the scientific research that we have heard about to take its course and to give us the proper base of scientific knowledge that we need to make informed decisions. It is our understanding, based on advice from the department, that the work program of this bill's independent expert scientific committee really needs a full five years to get to a proper level of scientific knowledge. So this amendment proposes a moratorium for that five-year period, with the option of lifting the moratorium should that work program be completed earlier.

As the Greens, we say that this is exactly the time that the precautionary principle should apply. The industry is expanding rapidly across the east coast, despite a serious lack of knowledge about the risk that CSG drilling, fracking and gas extraction poses, particularly to our groundwater systems. It is simply not acceptable—and we believe that our communities and our environment deserve better—to proceed in the absence of this knowledge.

The Australian Greens have suggested that there are a number of ways that this industry could be better regulated. Senator Waters has a bill before the Senate proposing that a water trigger be inserted into the EPBC Act—into our federal environmental laws—so that we can ensure that the full impacts on water systems from coal seam gas mining can be considered by the federal environment minister. Senator Waters has also proposed a landholder rights bill to allow people to say no to CSG mining on their land where the risks are still unknown, something that for a brief, fleeting period was supported by others in this place until they changed their position. The Greens have also proposed two motions in the Senate calling for a moratorium on coal seam gas mining.

We will be supporting the bill and debating these issues further when it comes to the Senate, but it would seem to be eminently sensible to use this opportunity, where it is on the national agenda and where we have the opportunity to progress with legislative reform, to say—as we have said before—that if there is 5,000 years worth of gas there, then waiting an extra five years while we work out the state of that e scientific knowledge will not hurt anyone. In fact, it might avoid a great deal of harm. So I commend the amendment to the House.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will speak briefly to the amendment and the previous amendment, moved by the member for Kennedy, which did not get through the House. Whilst I have great sympathy for the sentiment being expressed by the Greens—and I thank the member for Melbourne for his complimentary remarks—I am not sure that this is the vehicle to drive a moratorium process. There may well be other vehicles within the parliament that could do that. This legislation is essentially about objectivity. It is not picking one side of the debate or the other; it is establishing an independent scientific process that is locked into a national partnerships agreement, which broadens the area.

The suggestion that we have some sort of absolute moratorium until we get the science right does, I think, apply in some areas. If the independent scientific committee and the national partnerships agreement are actually working successfully, that will in fact happen. It will go to risk, particularly in relation to water resources. It will go to the cumulative impact of large coal developments plus others in some catchments—the catchment of the Namoi, for instance. Large developments are being proposed there; there are large developments there now; there are large coal-seam gas companies interested in another layer of extractive activities, all around quite massive areas. It is not in the Great Artesian Basin, as the member for Kennedy kept referring to. The artesian basin does not exist there, but there are quite large groundwater supplies that we do not fully comprehend either for the Murray-Darling plan that is in the parliament at the moment or for the extraction of coal-seam gas. In those cases, if the scientific committee is working effectively, it will delay some of these large developments until effective and fully objective knowledge exists about those catchments.

There are other catchments where we do have a relatively full scientific knowledge and where the water resources are not of the magnitude of either the artesian basin or areas on the Liverpool Plains, for instance. The member for Groom would be well aware of some of the irrigation areas on the Darling Downs. There are other electorates in Queensland where there is a degree of knowledge about the scientific impact on water resources.

For that reason I will not support the amendment. There may well be other vehicles in the parliament by which these issues can be driven, but I do not think this is the right bill for it. Bear in mind that a lot of work has gone into plugging together the national partnerships agreement with the states. If this amendment were passed, we would run the risk of the whole process fracturing and undoing a lot of good work that has been done by a lot of people over a number of years.

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

I seek some clarification from the minister. Wherever a project, either coal-seam gas or large-scale coalmining, is on the spectrum of planning—even at the exploration stage through to the development application stage—my understanding is that every step along the way as of now the science decides whether we progress in a planning sense to the next stage. That is my understanding. I seek some clarification from the minister. If I am correct and the science now is at the heart of every gateway in the planning process, a one-year or five-year moratorium, in my view, is unnecessary. The science is here; the science is now. It is the law as of today. For those reasons, I think a moratorium is not necessary and, if anything, we should be celebrating the success of this bill in finally injecting much needed science into the planning process at all steps along the spectrum of that process.

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

I have to respond to that in a way that does not prejudge any decisions. The best way I can respond to the points raised by the member for Lyne is to say that environmental decisions are based on what are covered as matters of national environmental significance within our national environmental legislation, known as the EPBC Act. There are some parts of that decision-making process which do not necessarily have science at their core—for example, heritage decisions which are covered under those sections. Where the decisions call for a foundation of scientific information, the best available scientific information is used. As a result of the amendments here today, there will be a continued and rapid improvement in the quality of that scientific information that forms the foundations of those parts of the decision making within the act.

Question negatived.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.