Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Ageing (Senator Ludwig) to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to the health impacts of coal seam gas.

As the community would be well aware, there are serious health impacts of coal seam gas, and they are becoming more and more evident every day, to the extent that overnight the French parliament has moved to ban fracking—that is, the use of chemicals to fracture rocks. They are very concerned in Europe—in fact, right around the world—and here in Australia we are seeing an onslaught of the expansion of coalmining and coal seam gas, with virtually no health impact assessment. I asked the minister: did the Commonwealth have a role in health impact assessment under the current enviro­nmental impact assessment arrange­ments? I can inform the Senate that the health minister does not have a role in that, and at the state government level quite a few state govern­ments do not include health impact assess­ments in their environmental impact assess­ment. So Australians currently are comple­tely unprotected from the adverse health impacts of coal seam gas, and they are mostly uninformed about the serious impacts. I met recently with an emeritus professor of medicine who really sat me back in my tracks, I can say, when he said to me, 'I believe that the impacts of coal seam gas and expanded coalmining are going to be the asbestos of this century.' That is a really shocking statement when you know that there is no current health assessment of coal seam gas going on. That is why Senator Brown moved a motion in the Senate on Tuesday this week for a Senate inquiry into the coal seam gas and coal industry, in particular because of the health impacts. He moved that motion on Tuesday, 10 May and gave notice with the terms of reference. On Wednesday morning, the following day, the Senate Standing Committee on Rural Affairs and Transport met, and after I had left that committee meeting to attend a Greens party room meeting—and, in fact, after the meeting finished—there were terms of reference circulated and discussed. They continued to be discussed at 10.46 am, and at 11.32 am yesterday on the website of the rural and regional affairs committee up went a new, expanded terms of reference, defined as a clarification of a reference to the management of the Murray-Darling Basin.

This was done for the National Party, who had been caught with their pants down on this and had moved into that committee with the sole view of putting that in so that later in the day, when Senator Brown moved for his reference, they could leap up and say, 'There is already a reference to this.' That is not how the Senate committee system should work. There is a genuine interest in this parliament in the health impacts of coal seam gas, but I can tell you that none of the government, the Liberal Party or the National Party oppose the expansion of coal seam gas in Australia.

What they are doing is running around after the event pretending to have a genuine interest, but health is not at the forefront of anything that they are doing. I might say that I am now aware that Senator Joyce arrived after I had left that meeting and had in his hand the terms of reference that Senator Brown had proposed to the Senate. When those additional terms of reference went up on the website by 11.30 am, they were largely the same as what the Greens had been moving for, except that health, having been a prominent part of the first component of the Greens motion, went down to the bottom as ' other related matters including health impacts'.

On the back of that, the temerity of it is that the National Party then ran out of here yesterday and put out a statement saying—and, in fact, they said it in the chamber—'If you check the website, you will see that we are right at the forefront of trying to get into this issue and make sure we protect the interests and property rights of landholders.' Right at the forefront? Yes, some three hours or so before it was meant to be voted on, so let's not con the community—the Nationals are the party of expanded coalmining and coal seam gas, and any suggestion that this is going to do anything other than support that industry is somewhat dubious. I finish by saying that Senator Joyce said in here that anyone misleading the constituency that they seek to assist creates torment because of the insincerity of their purpose. There is only one lot of people in here with insincerity—proved by that effort yesterday—and that is the National Party.

Question agreed to.

I seek leave to give notice of two motions in the terms which I will table.

Leave granted.