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

The coal-seam gas proposals in Australia, like those in the United States, Russia and elsewhere around the world, are simply mind-bending. There is a proposal for 40,000 gas wells to be sunk on the Darling Downs, one of the world's premier food lands, alone. There are now proposals for 550 such gas wells in the Pilliga Scrub woodland near Narrabri in New South Wales. We know that there is a proposal for a gas well at Petersham, right in the heart of metropolitan Sydney, and there are other proposals breaking out all over Australia. The concern about this is that not only would these proposals compromise some of the best farm and food producing lands in the country but they offer a direct threat to the groundwater systems, because they involve going through the groundwater systems into coal seams underneath and extracting methane under various measures—the worst of which is fracking, which involves the use of carcinogenic chemicals which have caused pandemonium in the United States. One only has to read the Financial Times of this last weekend to see the extreme concern that is being expressed in Pennsylvania, for one. I am amazed that the big parties, and in particular the National Party, have voted against an inquiry into coal-seam gas in this country. I am amazed that there could be such a deliberate subservience to these corporations that the Senate has denied the opportunity for there to be a proper inquiry.

Opposition senators interjecting—

The National Party is interjecting here because they are embarrassed, and should be embarrassed, about their studied ignorance. It is not only the coal-seam gas; it is their heads stuck in the ground that we have seen exemplified here today. (Time expired)