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

Well, food is a very important part of my life and I am proud of that. I would like to eat locally grown food and support our regional communities, as I am sure you would, Senator. That brings me to this bill. It is a very small improvement and, of course, that is why the Greens will be backing it. But, frankly, it is too little, too late. I am particularly concerned that there is not going to be a pause on coal seam gas approvals while this research committee does its research work. It seems to me to be patently ridiculous to charge a body with looking at the impacts of coal seam gas bioregionally, as we should be doing, yet not wait for its advice before more approvals are issued. I do not know whether anybody else thinks that is ridiculous. I think it is ridiculous. It flies in the face of the precautionary principle and it adds insult to injury that you bother setting up a committee and then not wait for its advice.

Senator Heffernan made the point—which is correct—that nobody actually has to listen to this committee. I wish that were not the case. I wish that were wrong. But, as we can see clearly from the National Partnerships Agreement, the state governments will only have to consider the advice of this committee. It will just be one of a list of considerations, and I am afraid as an environmental lawyer 'consider' is very weak. They can consider it and then they can decide to do something completely different. Effectively, they can ignore the advice of this committee, and they are getting paid $50 million each to boot. That is a very sweet deal for the states and, frankly, it is a very sweet deal for the government, who can now appear like they are doing something on coal seam gas when in reality this research body will have no impact at all on any of the approval decisions.

That brings me to the point about the limitations of our federal environmental laws and the fact that it is great that we have this science body who will now give the federal environment minister some advice on the water impacts of both coal seam gas and large coalmining but the environment minister will not have the power to act to protect our water resources. He only has the power given to him in that environment act for species, wetlands, World Heritage areas, Commonwealth waters, nuclear actions and the Great Barrier Reef—there is a list of about eight of them. Water is not on that list. So what good is this committee going to do to be providing advice to the federal minister that he cannot act on? I mean, for God's sake! Excuse my language, Chair. We need to give the environment minister power to act on the advice of this committee. If the committee says there are going to be long-term impacts on groundwater, our environment minister needs to be able to do something about that. This is why I have another bill on this matter before this place to give the minister the power to add that water trigger to our laws. I would urge all senators to reconsider their previous opposition to that bill, because it would certainly improve decision making.

I want to talk now about my disappointment in the backflip that we have seen from the coalition. We saw an amendment co-sponsored by Senator Xenophon, Senator Madigan, some coalition MPs and me to expand the purview of this research body to include land and its uses—that is, the impacts of coal and coal seam gas on land and its uses. It was quite a broad amendment and I was incredibly supportive of it. I had had a similar amendment which I had moved, but unfortunately it did not get support. So I was pleased to see that this slightly modified wording was then able to pass this place. I am very disappointed that the House saw fit to reject it. And I am dismayed that the coalition backflipped, changed their mind, and agreed with government on a much smaller amendment which was solely focused on the impacts of salt production and salinity.

Of course, salt is a huge problem and I do not for a moment claim that it is not. It is one of the largest problems with coal seam gas as well as those general groundwater contamination and depletion impacts. But my concern about limiting the scope of the committee to just salt production and salinity rather than the broader land and its uses, as this place originally insisted on and as the Greens will insist on again today, is that it excludes a whole lot of other impacts. It means this research body will now not be able to look at, for example, whether coal seam gas and farming can really co-exist, as the industry likes to claim at every opportunity but as producers say, 'No. In fact, that is an impossibility.'

It also means that this committee won't now look at the real impacts of subsidence from coal seam gas wells being sunk or from pipelines being laid for that matter, which is a massive problem both for farming operations and for the topography as it will lead to run-off problems.

Another issue that this committee will now be precluded from considering because of the unfortunate backflip by the coalition is a related issue: erosion from collapsing pipelines. I am sad to say that I have seen a few of those collapsed coal seam gas pipelines already—again on that Senate inquiry that I was privileged to participate in last year. Likewise, the impacts of land clearing for the roads, the pipelines and the wells themselves will now not be considered by this research committee. Interference with farming operations from coal seam gas will now not be considered. Fire safety and chemical storage, that now will not be considered. And, lastly, impacts from the actual infrastructure footprint of coal seam gas operations, which are significant—pipelines, roads, power lines, generators—will now not be considered.

We took evidence in that same Senate inquiry from some Darling Downs farmers who said that in fact the grid that was proposed for coal seam gas operations would inhibit their farming practices. They also said they had purchased some equipment that would have enabled more efficient and directed application of various fertilisers and pesticides, but they were now not able to use these because of the grid of the coal seam gas pipelines that would now be laid on their land. This is a direct example of where the surface impacts on farming from coal seam gas are going to be huge, and of course costly, for those farmers, not to mention costly for the environment.

All of this could have been considered by the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining; it could have been considered by that committee under the amendments that this place insisted on. And yet the House, and the backflip of the coalition in agreeing now with the government to constrain the breadth of that research back to just salt production and salinity, means that all of those impacts are now not going to be examined. I think it is a great shame that we have seen senators in this place speak out on those important issues, only to get rolled by their colleagues in the House. I am sure Senator Joyce in particular is dismayed that he has been rolled by Mr Abbott.

I want to conclude by saying that I was really pleased that as a result of that Senate inquiry there were some strong recommendations made. They were multiparty recommendations; everybody signed off on that report. In fact, there were recommendations for action on all of those land-use impacts that I just listed: recommendation 8, which talks about subsidence; recommendation 16, which talks about erosion from collapsing pipelines; recommendation 17, which talks about protecting strategic agricultural land from coal seam gas and having no-go zones; recommendation 20, which talks about fire safety and storage of chemicals on farmland; and recommendation 24, which talks about buffer zones for small communities subject to interference from coal seam gas. When this place and the House had the opportunity to put into action those recommendations, they squibbed it. They folded. They have been rolled. I think that is to the great disservice of all of the regional and urban communities out there who are really concerned about coal seam gas and who want to know that our groundwater, our land and our regional communities—and our reefs and our climate for that matter—are going to be properly considered in this absolutely unseemly rush to dig as many coal seam gas wells in this country as possible.

We will be insisting on those amendments. I would like to think we would have some company, but I suspect the two old parties will again remain with the coal seam gas and large coal mining industries and vote against proper scrutiny of all of those land-use impacts that this committee would otherwise have had the purview to look at.