Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

You are quite right, Chair; it is not a point of order.

This is shocking. Here we have a situation where yesterday we had the opposition supporting the requirement that there be an investigation—a scientific study—of the impact on water catchment of mining operations before those operations took place, including exploration. Then, where a substantial risk was identified, the mine would not go ahead. Now we have got the government and the opposition turning down this absolutely pivotal requirement. Where damage to the farmlands in the short term or long term can be identified, and there is a substantial risk of that damage, both the big parties say, ‘Well, we will leave that to the lobbying power of the mining organisations.’ This is a dreadful sell-out of common sense, let alone the farming communities that are getting the wrong end of this outcome.

Senator Nash may say that I am making a political statement here. Well, I am. I am a politician elected not just to get better outcomes for the people of Australia but to surely levy common sense in situations like this. I ask Senator Nash, or Senator Wong: how can you justify turning down a parliamentary requirement that where substantial risk is identified to farmlands, like those of the Breeza Plain or the Liverpool plains or indeed anywhere in the Murray-Darling Basin, there should not be action following that to protect those farmlands from that identifiable substantial risk? What is the point of doing a study if you then do not act upon it? It is incredible. This is an astonishing turnaround. I understand the excruciating position Senator Nash is in, and I ask her if she would say who it was from the Minerals Council of Australia—was it Mr Mitch Hooke or someone else—who so effectively got to the coalition overnight with this extraordinarily negative outcome.