Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to talk on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development) Bill 2012. This bill could be in danger of becoming a bill that you use when you want to be seen to be something but doing nothing—it could be. It has the potential to do that. I just point out to the minister's adviser that two government ministers have told me privately that the one thing the federal government knows about coal seam gas—listen carefully—is that they do not want to own the problem. 'Bill, you must understand we don't want to own the problem. Let the states own the problem.' It is a serious problem. I have to say that that is fair enough. If this bill, as the Greens have pointed out, is used as political cover to get everyone past the next election, including the coalition, good luck to you all. But if it is used, as Senator Macdonald has pointed out, to effectively dissect the problem, analyse where it is going to take us and do something about it, it will be a good thing.

Sure, I chaired the coal seam gas inquiry. There has been a lot of thunder and lightning since then. No-one has been able to shoot down the inquiry of the Senate, of which Senator Nash was a member. When Anna Bligh rang me about it, I said, 'Anna, you haven't read the inquiry's findings, but you will find that the government also signed up to the unanimous report.' In fact, she had not even read her own advice, the Queensland advice, which said, 'Do not proceed till you've done certain things.' But, because they had two of the large miners already approved before they got the advice, they gave approval to the third large miner—without naming them, but everyone knows who they are—to go ahead with mining based not on the new science, which said, 'Beware of this,' but on the fact that the other two miners had got their approval. It was a political decision.

So I ask the chamber and I will ask John Cotter, who I know well—he is a good bloke, and I will be putting some weight on him—to make sure this is not a bullshit process, because the debate has been. Yes, Madam Acting Deputy President, you are wondering about that. Do you want me to withdraw it?