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

I will keep it simple for Senator Birmingham to follow. I will consult with Senator Milne about this a little later over dinner, but I want to ask the minister at the table whether she could give the committee an assessment of what the greenhouse gas emissions coming from the export of coal and gas out of Australia will be once they are combusted. I might add that a recent shipment of woodchips which went from Tasmania to Japans was, according to Forestry Tasmania, burnt in a coal-fired power station. The point that was being developed by Senator Macdonald is a valid one. We are in a global trading situation, but we know that we share the atmosphere and that what is burnt elsewhere comes back to impact upon us, because it is part of the greenhouse gas emissions effectively coming out of this country. They will therefore effectively impact the climate change trajectory coming down the line—they will impact the Great Barrier Reef, the Murray-Darling Basin, the snowfields and the economy of this country.

Indeed, I would ask if the minister would look at the impact on the Darling Downs of the Wandoan coalmine, which the Minister for the Environment, the Hon. Tony Burke, ticked off on just a few months ago. I am told it might be up to 11 kilometres across. It is an open-cut coalmine in the farmlands of the Darling Downs—one of the largest open-cut coalmines on the face of the planet, if not the largest. Is that coal going to be combusted through export to China, Japan and perhaps South Korea and other countries overseas?

I also ask the minister, following on the line of questioning developed by Senator Macdonald, who has come back into the chamber, if there is an assessment by the government of the impact of the proposed 40,000 drill holes for coal seam gas in the Darling Downs. You will know, Minister, that there is a very large facility being built at Gladstone to process this gas to have it sent overseas, where it will be creating greenhouse gases, which will be feeding into the atmosphere. Senator Macdonald is quite right: this will very likely be in countries where there will not be a provision for domestic combustion of fossil fuels—as there sensibly is under this legislation—that would take into account, at least in the modest way in which this legislation does, the impact on the atmosphere, on the entities I have spoken about and therefore on the economy. What we have here is an export industry which is not exporting the problem at all; it is going to come back to us. Australia is left with the legacy of that problem, but the exporters—which, I repeat, are largely overseas entities—are going to escape the carbon price that is so fundamental to this excellent package of legislation that the Gillard government, working with the Greens and the Independents, has brought before this chamber. Senator Macdonald has raised a very important point. I am grateful to him for having put it. I am following it through to ensure that we get some enlightenment in the chamber on a matter which is quite fundamental to the issue at hand.

Progress reported.