Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development) Bill 2012. While the Greens will be supporting this bill because it does take us some small way towards addressing the huge problems with coal seam gas and large coal mines, we think it is far too little too late. The Greens have long raised the well-founded concerns of the Australian community about the risks coal seam gas and coal mining pose to our groundwater resources, to our climate, to our good-quality agricultural land, to our regional communities across Australia and to our environment, particularly the Great Barrier Reef—with massive dredging for export.

The coal seam gas and coal mining industries are rapidly expanding across Australia's rich farming regions, which we have in short supply, particularly in my home state of Queensland. They are just eating up the landscape, and we are seeing the industrialisation of rural Australia. Our good-quality food-producing land and its ability to feed us and the world—because we remain net food exporters and should continue to be—and the groundwater that the productivity of that land often depends on, are so precious they should be off limits to big mines and to coal seam gas.

That is the Greens' position, which I have raised many times in this chamber. We are backed by expert bodies like the CSIRO and the National Water Commission, who still do not know what the long-term and cumulative threats posed by these industries are, particularly to our water resources and the climate but also more broadly to our environment and communities. This is despite claims from APIA last week that CSIRO had backed coal seam gas and said it was safe for groundwater. Of course, CSIRO came out and said, 'No way; that's not what we said at all. We still don't know what the long-term risks are.' Yet approvals have been issued by both state and federal governments without the understanding of those long-term impacts.

Vale the precautionary principle—it has been sacrificed for short-term private profits, some small amount of royalties and the promise of jobs, which never eventuate in the orders of magnitude promised by the big miners or which are simply fly-in fly-out or drive-in drive-out workers who drive up the cost of living for locals and destroy families.

We just do not know if CSG is safe for our land and water when we lack the information about its long-term impacts, and when the government has done little of its own research—the Namoi catchment study being one welcome exception to that—and simply relies on the so-called evidence of the miners themselves. But look at the scoreboard. Urban and rural Australians worried about our land, our water, our climate and the Reef have been shocked by the recent rash of disasters associated with the expanding coal seam gas industry. There has been gas bubbling up through the Condamine River bed, close to CSG mining operations, in recent months; there was contamination of the Springbok aquifer in Queensland in 2009—a very worrying occurrence; there was the release of CSG polluted wastewater during the 2011 floods; there was a gas well blow-out and drilling fluid leak near Chinchilla; and of course there was the recent spill disaster in the New South Wales Pilliga Forest.

Much more needs to be done to reign in the unbridled acceleration of these fossil fuel industries. The Greens generally support this bill, but it needs to be given teeth, and much more needs to be done to investigate and properly regulate this industry before any more approvals are hastily granted. The Greens will continue to push for far better oversight and management of these industries, for the future of Australian communities and for our generations to come.

Despite the lack of information about the long-term impacts of coal seam gas, Australian farmers still have no right to say no to coal seam gas mining on their land. I have introduced a bill to allow farmers to choose if they want CSG on their property, given the huge uncertainties about its long-term risks to their land. It was originally Tony Abbott's idea—but, unfortunately, the next day he changed his mind. What a tragic shame.

A couple of weeks ago, the latest community in the Darling Downs in Queensland faced the invasion of their land from coal seam gas. Cecil Plains, with some of the best soil in the Downs, was being invaded by Arrow Energy's exploratory drill rigs, the fourth of the big CSG miners with megaprojects in Queensland. That community was going to blockade. Thankfully the company have now deferred their plans, but for how long we do not know. The blockading is pretty unusual in rural communities, just like the Country Women's Association, who recently protested for the first time in their 90-year history against coal seam gas. This threat to people's farmland and the security and cleanliness of their water supply is really mobilising people. Farmers on the rich Cecil Plains, many of whom are generational family farmers, are the latest in a long list of communities who are banding together, protesting and blockading against the cowboy, bullying and divisive tactics of CSG companies to force their way onto their farmland. That forcing is completely legal. The farmers cannot say no; they cannot refuse entry. My bill to give them that right is desperately needed. I want to take this opportunity to commend and pay tribute to the Lock The Gate Alliance—both the organisation and its members—and all of the farmers and city folk too who have banded together against the might of coal and coal seam gas giants. More power to their arms.

I have twice moved in this place for a moratorium on coal seam gas until we understand more about the risks of this industry. Sadly, the two big parties sided with the big miners and ignored the community. When I moved a motion reflecting the first few paragraphs of the Nationals' own policy on coal seam gas, they did not come into the chamber to vote and back their own policy, which had wisely called for land and water to be safe.

I have also proposed a nationwide Senate inquiry into coal seam gas to get the whole picture of the true environmental, coastal, economic and social impacts of coal seam gas across the whole country. We looked at CSG in the Murray-Darling inquiry. I had the pleasure of sitting in on the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee for that inquiry, but CSG is going to go everywhere—of course, it is shale gas in WA—and we did not get the chance to properly consider the marine impacts of exporting most of that gas and the port expansions that entails, let alone the pressure on household gas prices from limiting domestic supply.

Lastly, the Greens have been calling for independent Australian studies of the life cycle carbon emissions of coal seam gas. There are none currently, so there is no proof that this so-called transition fuel is any more climate friendly than coal. Let's be clear: now is not the time to be opening up yet another fossil fuel industry. That is why the Greens have been calling for independent Australian studies into the life cycle carbon emissions of coal seam gas and better monitoring of fugitive emissions from leaking gas wells and pipes.

We welcome this bill as a first step towards better protecting our water resources from the risks posed by large coalmining and coal seam gas. The bill, which sets up an independent scientific expert panel to advise on the risks associated with coal seam gas and coal mining projects, recognises that there are serious gaps in the science about the potential threats posed by these industries. We acknowledge the significant reform that Mr Windsor has achieved in securing the government's commitment to this bill and recognise that this is an issue of utmost importance to his region, but it is shared by so many rural communities across eastern Australia. This bill is an improvement on the current state of affairs, where major mining developments are being considered for approval in our prime natural and agricultural areas without being underpinned by adequate and independent science about the risks evolved, but it is toothless. This bill does sets up under our federal environmental laws a committee which can advise governments, but only state governments can act on the advice and even then, under the funding agreement that they get 50 grand for, they only have to consider the advice of this committee.

As a former environmental lawyer, I have seen the weakness of mere consideration. Decision makers can consider information and then totally disagree with it or disregard it. What recourse does the federal government have if state governments choose private profit over the wellbeing of our groundwater-dependent communities, industries or the environment? The answer appears to be: none at all. Unlike other issues regulated by the federal environment act, the federal minister will not be able to call in a project and review the decision because the federal minister has very limited remit to consider water issues.

That brings me to the key problem that we have with this bill: the fact that there is no point in setting up an advisory body on water issues when the minister has no power to act on water impacts under our environmental laws as they currently stand. As people may know, our federal environmental laws are like a silo, so the federal minister can consider only the impacts that are listed in one of those silos, like threatened species, World Heritage areas, Ramsar wetlands and a few others.

Water is not on that list, and water—its depletion and its contamination—is the key problem that communities and the Greens have with coal seam gas. So, while the federal minister has this great expert panel, he or she will only be able to consider its advice in really quite narrow circumstances, where, for example, national threatened species will be impacted. That is fine where there is a groundwater-dependent threatened species, as there is in Queensland, which was why the minister could impose conditions on water for the big three Queensland CSG projects in the first place, but there will not always be groundwater-dependent threatened species on that threatened species list that will allow the federal minister to properly consider the water impacts of mines and coal seam gas.

The minister needs powers to consider water in and of itself. Without that, despite the existence of this new committee, the federal minister will not be able to stop projects where the science indicates that there are broad risks to our communities, our water systems and the environment from these proposals. Those responsibilities will stay with the state governments. Given the states's track record, we think it is high time that the federal government stepped in to manage the major risks posed by these industries to our ground and surface water. To this end, I have introduced a separate bill to protect water from coal seam gas mining which would add the impacts of mining on water to our environmental laws as a matter of national environmental significance.

We will continue to push for the federal government to step up and we hope to secure support for this bill in the Senate in coming months. But the Senate inquiry into that bill recommended that it not be passed, which, unfortunately, shows me that the government and the opposition are really not interested in the federal government playing a proper role to regulate coal seam gas or to refuse it, let alone condition it to try and protect land and water.