Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to give an account of our community campaign to have the North Coast CSG mining free. Our community is deeply concerned about this issue and its harmful impact on our water, farms and prime agricultural land, our fishing and tourist industries and our way of life. No-one wants to wake up one morning and see, to start with, over 1,000 coal seam gas mining wells littering our lands.

The member for Richmond and I have a petition calling on the New South Wales coalition government to make the North Coast CSG mining free. Yet the local state National MPs and the federal National members—Senator Joyce, Senator Nash, Senator Birmingham, and, now, joining them, the coalition resources spokesperson—support it and support its expansion, as does their leader.

The Liberal-National coalition have shown, without a doubt, that they are just paying lip service on coal seam gas issues until the election. The coalition in the Senate is trying to weaken the government's water trigger legislation with an amendment that would hand environmental assessment powers to the states. The coalition let it slip through here but they are now seeking to put an amendment that would weaken these protections by allowing the Commonwealth to refer scientific assessments back to the states.

Senator Birmingham, the shadow parliamentary secretary for the environment, has told the Senate that the coalition does not like the legislation but, because of community concerns, they will not oppose it. But they are clearly working hard to wind back water protections. It is there in Hansard in black and white, with the senators saying they will not oppose it because that would let the government politicise the issue. But Senator Birmingham said:

We will work to fix these issues should we succeed later this year.

It is duplicity, and Senator Birmingham is clear about the parts of the legislation he does not like. The coalition does not believe that water protection should apply to the exploration phase or drill test site, and they do not want the bill to apply in any areas being assessed—so, no scrutiny whatsoever.

To take the cake, today on local radio Senator Nash downplayed local concerns about the coal seam gas industry in our region, and I was stunned to hear her say that. Whenever Senator Nash makes comments from her base in southern New South Wales, she shows how little she knows about the Northern Rivers. She does not understand the enormity of the coal seam gas mining threat to our region. She does not get why plans for 1,000 wells across the Northern Rivers would be environmental vandalism of the highest order. She does not get the threat to water, farms and the beautiful environment, to the fishing and tourism industries, to real estate values and to our way of life.

While communities across the Northern Rivers are screaming out that the industry is not welcome here, Senator Nash and her Nationals colleagues are not listening, and their coalition leader, the member for Warringah, is pushing New South Wales to get cracking with expanding the coal seam gas mining industry. The Nationals candidate, Kevin Hogan, has grabbed onto CSG as a campaign issue and has said he would not want it near his farm, but what has he done about it? Nothing. He clearly has not made an impact on his state or federal colleagues who are clamouring to expand it and who support it and want to wind back the protections that we have introduced. When the state government announced CSG exclusion zones for Hunter Valley wineries and horse studs but left our area unprotected, what did we get from Mr Hogan? A fawning letter to the editor praising our local state National Party MPs. This is not the sort of issue on which you can just pop up and say a few words and sit back down again. This is one where you need to get in and fight for your community.

I have been working hard for years on this issue, researching the science and the state and federal laws on water protection, lobbying for legislative change in Canberra, talking to lots of farmers and working with lots of farmers and community members actively campaigning on the issue. The federal government has moved to protect our communities' water from the harmful impacts of coal seam gas mining by amending the national environment law, the EPBC Act. Mr Hogan is asking people to vote for the federal coalition, the same coalition that has vowed to wind back these environmental protections, streamline the coal seam gas mining approval process and 'unlock huge gas reserves' in New South Wales. Mr Hogan needs to decide whether he is with the Knitting Nannas, who sit outside the state member's offices protesting against CSG, or on the inside as one of the Nationals. My colleague the member for Richmond said that this election would be like a referendum on this issue, and I agree with her.