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

But there are a few simple questions that this committee has to answer. As we all know—but I will say this for those who do not know—coal seam gas has reserves of, probably, 490 TCF, which is trillion cubic feet in the old language, which converts to about 480 PJ—petajoules. That is, according to Minister Ferguson, roughly two centuries of supplies of gas. Anyone that was on the committee is tuned into the argument about protecting farming land, but a lot of the banking thinkers in parliament are not tuned into it because of the huge amounts of money involved and the royalties et cetera. But I hope this committee gives consideration to where we are going to be in 100 years, because, believe it or not, there is potentially as much gas out in Central Australia as there is in all the prime farming areas. The only problem is that the miners do not want to get it because it is more expensive to get it to the coast, because the bulk of this gas is destined for export.

Santos have won the lottery amongst the miners. Santos have a lot of the gas tied up in Central Australia. They say, and the New South Wales government says, and Barry O'Farrell has said—and thank God he took a bit of my advice—that, if you are driving in a fog, you turn your lights on and slow down. To his credit, he is trying to do that. But Santos are holding the cards for New South Wales, because they have plenty of unexploited gas reserves. At the present time, with the exploited gas reserves, New South Wales has four years of supply left, and no doubt Santos will be trying to get the best commercial deal for themselves with New South Wales in rewriting the contracts, because they have plenty of supplies left out there.

We took some information in the inquiry, and I hope this new committee listens, and I wish I were on this new committee; that is a message to the government. We discovered that it takes about 300 to 400 years to rebalance some of the aquifers that are being extracted now. So when APPEA—who, to their great credit, I debated the other night in the concert hall in Angel Place in Sydney, and they lost; there were over 800 people there—put out a thing the other day which said everything is jake, the CSIRO had to correct them, but the gas industry did not accept the correction. They said, 'We note your comments.' That is the danger for this committee—I hope the Senate is listening—because that is the industry being told by Australia's most eminent scientists that what they put out in a press release was wrong, yet the industry did not take the correction. They just said, 'We note your comments,' which is bloody absurd.

Can I just say that no-one in this debate has been able to explain to me—I hope this new committee do, and it will be wonderful if they do, because it will probably shut the industry down under the present arrangements—what they are going to do with the annual production of 700,000 tonnes of granulated salt. Granulated salt stores uncompressed—that is, coarse granulated salt, and bear in mind that I do not have any notes, Wacka—at 806 kilograms per cubic metre. So with the 700,000 tonnes, because it stacks at 32 degrees, if you stack it 10 metres high then it is going to be 32 metres wide and 5½ kilometres long. That is the annual salt extraction under the present proposed extraction rates of coal seam gas. Twenty million tonnes of salt for the known life of the known tenements for which there is no useful purpose, no safe storage. It is the most toxic substance for agriculture. When we asked them, 'What are you going to do with this salt?' they said, 'We're going to store it in an approved storage.' What is an approved storage? They did not know. Yet the Queensland government, in their rush, because they are broke, as is New South Wales, to get the money said, 'Go ahead. We'll figure that out later.' No known safe storage; no known commercial purpose. We on the committee—and I hope this new committee takes the advice—say that this salt should not be stored in the Murray-Darling Basin, in an agricultural area. Go figure out the cost of fixing that. When the CSIRO says—they have said this to the Senate committee—that some of it will take, depending on the aquifer, 300 to 400 years to rebalance the aquifer, I hope this new committee does not just say, 'We note that.' To get to the contamination of the water is another issue.

In the United States they have been locked up in the courts for 20 years arguing about this. Bakersfield is suing a miner for $2 billion because the miner has permanently contaminated the water supply, and yet we are saying, 'We'll keep going'—because the industry is keeping on going—and part of the politics and all the garbage behind the wooden headed people is that we need the gas. Santos has more gas than they know what to do with if they want to exploit it in South Australia. We absolutely do not know the connectivity with the aquifers. We do know—we took evidence on the Walloon Springbok aquifer being contaminated—that several bores out in paddocks were dewatered.

What was the Queensland government's attitude to this? Bear in mind that John Cotter has to deal with this. They said, 'We're not going to take a precautionary principle approach to this. We're going to take a make-good principle, so that after the damage is done we'll come along and repair it.' As I said to them, 'All right, I've got 500 cows at the back of Longreach or somewhere, at Roma, on a bore, and it has disappeared.' The reason these things disappear, to put it into language that people can understand, is: two big fat blokes are leaning against a thin fibro wall; one walks away from the wall and the other bloke falls through the wall. But, while they were both leaning against the wall, the wall stayed in place. That is exactly what is happening under the ground. We have low geological fault lines and Mother Nature has balanced the pressures. It is like putting a prick in a balloon—once you depressure one you alter the behaviour of the aquifer. That is what is happening. The CSIRO does not know the answer. They have told us that. We do not know the answer. What the Queensland government has said—and I presume others will say this in due course, and maybe even the Victorian government will say this, because they think the attraction of the royalties and the gas is more important than where Mother Earth is going to be in 100 or 200 years—is, 'We'll fix all that up later.'

In the United States there is shale gas. Senator Nash, the committee wants to look at the shale gas industry. By the way, at the Olympic Dam site they were going to have to dewater an aquifer in the process of getting to the new uranium resource base down there. In the United States some of the wells are 80 years old and, like some of the buildings in Darling Point in Sydney, the salt gets at them and they fall apart. The concrete rusts. Over in the United States they are locked up in the courts as to who is legally responsible. The Queensland government has taken a decision whereby the legal responsibility of a miner ceases when they seal the well—and the problem may not occur for another 50 years! So, Wacka, your grandkids will have to deal with that. These are problems that this committee—and I will be on them like nobody's business—has got to solve, because we do not have an answer to this stuff.

It is a great trick to buy your science—and that is what the coal seam gas industry has been doing. Good luck to them. If they can solve these problems then I am happy to have the industry. Let us take Origin Energy. At the present time there are about 40,000 wells in Queensland, and two of Origin's tenements are going to produce in their life four million tonnes of granulated salt. So we are talking about a stack that is not 32 metres wide but 70-odd metres wide, 10 metres high and 25 kilometres long. That is just from one licence holder's known tenements. I note that in the debate with the mining club—and, by the way, the mining club sent out an email saying, 'Let's stack Recital Hall, out at Angel Place, with mining people,' which they did not succeed in doing and we succeeded in winning the debate—they did not want to talk about salt. Rick Wilkinson did not want to talk about salt. He did not want to talk about contamination of the aquifers, because the industry does not know the answer. Yet we are saying: 'She'll be right, mate. She'll be right on the night.' So the industry has bought the science.

A lot of the science going on at the universities is now paid for by industry. In the case of agriculture, it is paid for by Monsanto and other people who exploit research. They are putting in the money. And, sure, they are giving out footy jumpers to various towns—you know, 'We're great for the town.' Go to Roma: the rent was $220 or $240 for a three-bedroom home; it is now $850. So, if you are working at a service station, you cannot afford to rent a home. What we need to do is to make sure that this committee is smart enough to understand when it is being had with science. Achieving independent science is very difficult if the government does not put up the money for it. Industry is smart enough to know this. It is like having a good tax accountant: if the tax law changes you get a good accountant to manage your affairs to get around the new law.

Here is a press release from my good friend Martin Ferguson—I think he is a cousin of mine—which says that there are 390 trillion cubic feet—10 times the size of Gorgon—of known possible reserves in Australia. So we have got a good reserve. We have enough reserves in Central Australia not to have to go into the farming land. I have to say that, to his credit, James Balderstone said to the committee: 'We won't go where we're not invited.' Not too many have done that. Also there will be—and there should be—no-go zones, because, as everyone has heard me say for some years now, the global food task is going to be far more important than the global energy task. By 2050, barring a human catastrophe, there will be nine billion people on the planet and 50 per cent of those people will be poor for water. It is estimated that one billion people will be unable to feed themselves—all science has some vagary in it. Also, two-thirds of the world's population will be living in Asia, with 30 per cent of the productive land of Asia having gone out of production, and the food task doubling. If you think the present situation with people coming across from Indonesia is a problem, there will be six billion people on the planet who will possibly be displaced. That is a much bigger problem than the global energy task.

I want to raise one other issue, which is a change in the law in Queensland. An amendment bill went through parliament last week, without any apparent consultation with peak landholder groups, which will see hundreds of Queensland farmers unable to claim compensation for the impacts of coal seam gas and other petroleum development on their business and lifestyle. Guess what?

In a change via the Mines Legislation (Streamlining) Amendment Bill that was considered minor by the present government, the definition of the occupier of the land was altered in the Petroleum and Gas (Production and Safety) Act 2004. The change effectively means that farmers who operate their business through family trusts, companies or partnerships without formal leasing agreements in place may find themselves ineligible for compensation. This is a sleight of hand by the government: 'Come to the footy box with us. Here's a glass of wine.' The amended wording of this act now effectively means that only the occupiers are those with registered leases. So if a share farmer gets his crop ruined for some reason, he cannot claim compensation under the act. Now that is another one for Mr Cotter to deal with.

I will come to the detail of that in due course because I am running out of time, but these are the outrageous things that go on behind the scenes. I have to say I am pretty distressed about the fact that the government would be so cunning as to do something like that. Whose side are they on? Sure, more people live in the western suburbs than all of rural Australia, and in New South Wales all but 12 per cent of people live in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle and they all think the food is in Coles, Woolies and ALDI. We have got to think about where it is going to be by 2070 with 12 billion people on the planet, barring a human catastrophe, and China having to feed half of its population from someone else's resource—which is why I have to hurry up to 1S3 and have a discussion about foreign investment, which is all about the changing world, the redefinition of sovereignty and sovereign wealth funds. I think even China, the central government, is getting the message that we do not want them to be able to come out here under the old foreign takeovers act, which it is—and the Foreign Investment Review Board aims up that and, to his credit, Brian Wilson recognises it—and treat whatever they acquire here as the homeland back home.

But back to this: it has been a great pleasure to be able to address the Senate. I would like to put John Cotter and this committee on notice that we do not want a political fix that gets everyone past the next election. We do not want the federal government to say, 'We don't own the problem. This is a way of getting around it.' This committee can only give advice; it cannot compel anyone. They can tell them to go to hell like the gas industry told the CSIRO to go to hell. I would like to be on it but, failing that, I will be watching it. Thanks.