Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to say how critical this amendment is, particularly for the future of rural and regional Australia and particularly for areas that will be growing our food in the future. It is disgraceful that permission has been given for coal seam gas exploration when the precautionary principle would have told you they have no idea what the impact on groundwater or the Artesian Basin will be, yet they have allowed this to proceed. Furthermore, they have no idea how much fugitive emissions of methane are going from those coal seam gas sites into the atmosphere.

I started my political career supporting the farmers at Wesley Vale against the North Broken Hill pulp mill. I have been out with Senator Waters. I have been out in New South Wales with Kate Fairman and Jeremy Buckingham—they are members of parliament there. I have been to the Felton Valley, I have been to Moree, I have been through Lismore and I have been out onto the Liverpool Plains. Everywhere I go, farmers say to me that they cannot believe that they have been sold out so badly by both the Liberal and the National parties, who have told them for years that they support them in what they do. Yet, when push comes to shove, those parties are selling out to the coal industry and the coal seam gas industry against the best interests of protecting agricultural land and water into the future.

I have been on some of those properties and it is very, very clear—particularly with those black soils—that you will get massive erosion if you allow the infrastructure for coal seam gas onto those properties. But, apart from anything else, farmers and farming communities ought to have the right to say no. The anger out there is extreme because the political process has said, 'Where the most votes are counts the most.' They have changed the law to protect communities where there are votes, like Western Sydney, but they have left rural communities high and dry. I can tell you that people recognise—as Lester Brown has said many times—that in this century food security is a major challenge: those responsible for producing food particularly need to do it in the face of extreme weather events and in the face of agricultural land being lost to urbanisation and other pressures. We must protect this land and we must give farmers the right to say no to coal seam gas and coal on their properties.

This is the era— (Quorum formed) As I was saying, Lester Brown has recognised that food is the new oil in this century, and land and water are the new gold. It is about time that in Australia we recognise the pressure that the environment is under and we protect our land, water and rural communities. I think this is a critical amendment to give farmers the right to say no. We have heard from the Leader of the Opposition—depending on which station he is being interviewed on at the time—that sometimes he supports farmers rights to say no and at other times he does not. It is about time we actually had this tested in the parliament. This is going to be a very significant vote as to whether people actually do want to support farmers being able to stand up.

When I was out on the Liverpool Plains, I met a gentleman who was 70 years old; his name was Bill. He came down to talk to me and he said he had spent his 70 years building up his property to the state that it is in now. It is a very beautiful property and he said he never expected that he would have to spend the rest of his life defending it. That is a pretty powerful statement for a farmer to make. He has coal seam gas next door. Other communities, like at Moree, have locked the gates—and good on them. Communities around the country are trying to do the same.

They are up against it because of the power of the fossil fuel lobby. When you look at what has happened in New South Wales—with ICAC in particular—and you find out how many of these permits have been granted and what the conditions of those are, you really have to scratch your head and ask, 'Why haven't they been revoked, in light of how they were granted in the first place? How is it possible that farming communities are being wrought asunder and yet the people who have facilitated this are getting away with it?' As far as the government is concerned, it is very late for Tony Burke—now the minister—to be concerned about it after he approved every coal seam gas project that came across his desk until now, including the Gloucester facility. That is why the Greens have argued strongly that these laws should apply retrospectively, particularly to those projects that have not actually been started. And they should be applied retrospectively to those that have started, to the extent of them being forced to report on the water and atmospheric impacts of the fugitive emissions coming from those projects.

There is no excuse. Eighty per cent of the fossil fuel reserves should stay in the ground if we are to be serious about global warming and constraining global warming to less than two degrees. That means no more new fossil fuel industries. It makes no sense to be driving a fossil fuel industry at the end of the fossil fuel age. You cannot stand up in here, day after day, and say, 'I believe the climate science,' and in the next breath give the go-ahead to the biggest coal mines and massive coal seam gas facilities from one end of the country to the other. It makes no sense. It is totally hypocritical. You either believe this climate science and get on with rolling out 100 per cent renewables and protecting agricultural land and water or you accept the fact that you are a climate sceptic, that you do not believe the climate science and that is why you want to drive the fossil fuel industry.

But you cannot have it both ways, and it is about time people started to face up to that. We are seeing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef as I stand here, as a result of new coal ports. We have the government and the coalition driving the opening up of coal in the Galilee Basin and the Bowen Basin. The Galilee Basin alone, if it were a separate country, would be producing seven per cent of the world's emissions when that coal is burned. It has to stay in the ground. It is not only a bad thing for the atmosphere but a bad thing for economic development. We cannot have people investing in companies when we know that the share value is going to be written off, because the value is based on reserves and these reserves are not accessible if you are serious about the climate science. Let us get back and protect our farmers; let us give them the right to say no.