Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Not once! You have never been told that they are putting their investments into Africa and South America rather than into Australia? Here is our Foreign Minister—he claims that that has never been told to him once! Well, gee, Minister, you must live and work in a cocoon, because I am a mere backbencher and, when I go to those places, people—and I do not ask them—come up and tell me; they plead with me. But then I suspect that most in Korea, Japan and China can read the opinion polls, as we can here, and I suspect that, Minister, if you are being truthful in saying that no-one has told you that, they clearly have not told you that because they see you as a complete irrelevance for the next three or four months of your term as Foreign Minister.

The idea of regulating the impacts of coal-seam gas developments and large coalmining development on a water source, as I say, is not a bad one, but it is not a new one. I know that, in my state of Queensland—even, I have to concede, under the former Bligh Labor government this issue was being addressed, however poorly. But, since the Campbell Newman government has come into operation, they have been addressing this issue very precisely and exactly, with all of the science behind it and with care and the sort of management that is needed.

Again, we see the hypocrisy of the Greens political party and the Labor Party. You have only to read what Ms Gillard said when this idea was floated a little while ago. She indicated it was completely unnecessary. She goes back, I might say, to repeat—and I never thought I would say this but, by comparison you have got to—what those great Labor governments of Hawke and Keating did when these issues were addressed. They said, 'Let the states do it. Let's not duplicate the regulation. Let's not make Australia the sort of country where everything is regulated twice and even thrice by different governments.'

So the bill, as I say, addresses a sensible issue, but it is an issue that was already very clearly, precisely and exactly addressed by the various state governments around. And now that you have decent state governments across almost the length and breadth of that part of Australia that counts, you will find that this management and protection of our water resources is very well looked after by the states.

I will be voting for this bill—not that I have any reason for thinking that it is necessary. But it is simply another Labor initiative that duplicates and triplicates regulation in this country.