Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution because I think this is a debate well worth having. I commend both Senator Colbeck and Senator Cadell for what I think is a fantastic motion that addresses many of the issues with the implementation of renewables across the country. But, before I go into the detail of this particular motion and the actual inquiry, I just want to address Senator Grogan's statements that somehow we are anti-renewable. She's right; I am anti-renewable. But I am pro-environment, because, at the end of the day, renewables aren't good for the environment. They're a threat to our biodiversity and they cannot be recycled. The name itself is a lie, because you cannot recycle the concrete blocks that go into the ground, you cannot recycle the wind turbines, you cannot recycle the wind blades, you cannot recycle the solar panels and you're going to rip out large swathes of land with transmission lines.

This is the lie that we have to address—that, somehow, because you don't believe in renewables or climate change you don't care about the environment. I am very passionate about the environment. I'm a sixth-generation Australian farmer. My mother's family, the Brocks and the Pikes, grew up in the Macleay Valley near Kempsey. That is a beautiful part of the world. The Macleay River is a beautiful river, and I often stop off when I drive to Sydney. I'll always stop in Kempsey and visit the old family dairy and things like that. I strongly recommend that anyone who's driving up to northern New South Wales takes the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful Northern Rivers that go through there. My father's family moved up from Narrabri. My great-great-grandfather on my mother's side was a convict and a vagabond that was picked in Dublin and came out in 1826. My father's side moved up progressively from Victoria, through New South Wales and eventually to Chinchilla. My father, who will turn 88 on Friday, is still a farmer. He's still out on the farm, as is my brother.

So, just as I'm passionate about the environment, I'm also passionate about our farmland. I'm very passionate about our farmers because it is the farmers that feed this country, and our agricultural sector has always been the backbone of this country. It's an absolute insult to think that you're just going to walk onto their land and build all these renewables without actually properly explaining what you intend to do. Farmers are quite rightly concerned. They are very concerned. But I want to address that issue later on.

I want to come back to the fundamental issue that if you're not pro-renewable you're not pro-environment, and that's just not true. That is just not true. I have to admit that the Left have been very good at conflating the two issues. If there's one thing we have to improve on this side of the parliament, it's delineating our passion for the environment, whether it be our biodiversity, our land management, plastics in the ocean or our riparian zones. They're all things that I know this side of the chamber are extremely passionate about, and we have to fight very hard for them. But, at the same time, the greatest environmentalists in my view are the farmers and the greatest way to protect the environment is through land management. Having grown up both on a mixed farm property in Chinchilla and further out in western Queensland, I just know that some of this ideology is not actually converting to good results. There's no greater example of that than the mulga country out in south-west Queensland, where people think that locking up the mulga instead of actually pulling it is the right thing for the environment. It is not the right thing for the environment, because, when the mulga is allowed to grow, it destroys the grass underneath it. Eventually the grass dies and the ground cover seals. Then, when it rains, the water runs over the top of the ground, not into the ground. We need grass cover. Our grasses and our grasslands are just as important as our native forests and our other types of tree life.

Nothing exemplifies the complete misunderstanding and lack of knowledge of the inner-city greenies and lefties, who supposedly want to save the environment, more than the solutions they're proposing, which are actually going to do more damage to the environment. One of the things about western Queensland and certain other areas is that you actually have to allow sunlight into the ground. If you don't, the trees will eventually block the sunlight and you will end up getting sealed ground cover. Not only that—and I know Shaun 'Zoro' Radnedge was just down from Charleville this morning—but we see shires die because these blocks of land are being sold off to foreign multinationals. They don't manage the land, so the land then gets an infestation of pests. We don't want wild pigs, wild goats and wild cats—it's just horrendous, the number of cats out there in outback Australia. I've seen a few of those big cats in my time out there, and it's amazing just how much damage they do. So we need to keep our farmers on the farmland, managing the land. That is true environmentalism, in my view.

There's this myth that somehow carbon dioxide is bad for the environment; it is actually a part of photosynthesis. I know people will mock me for saying that, but it is a natural part of the environment, and it is recycled for free through grass, trees and phytoplankton. Phytoplankton in the ocean actually absorbs 70 per cent of the world's CO2. It was interesting that there was an ABC article just after the bushfires in southern Australia a few years ago that even commented that there was a phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean because of all the carbon dioxide released into the environment. I think that's a much more environmentally friendly way to recycle energy, through photosynthesis, than pretending that you can recycle batteries, recycle solar panels or recycle wind blades and other sorts of things.

I just want to address some of the points in this motion and some of the issues that this committee will look at. I think that they are excellent points that need to be addressed. I'll just talk about them in any order. Unfortunately, Senator Sterle, it looks like we're not going to get it. I have to say that I'm very disappointed that it isn't coming to the rural and regional affairs committee. It looks like it's going to go to the environment committee. We're going to look at the 'terms and conditions for compulsory access and acquisition'. There are very, very good questions to ask here. How on earth are these transmission lines going to cross farmers' lands? What will they be compensated? Will the land be taken from the farmers? What rights do they have? That's an excellent point. 'Fairness of compensation' is another excellent point. You might say that the land is worth $500 an acre, but, if you've got a big transmission line running across your farmland and you can't—

Yes. Think about if, for some particular reason, you're no longer able to access the land or, more importantly, other people can come onto and access your land at any time. I happen to know about this because of the stories I've heard from my own home town about when the gas wells were put into farmlands in Chinchilla. A lot of people don't understand that you can't just go driving around paddocks willy-nilly. You've got to stay on the road and not drive at 80 kilometres per hour past a herd of cattle or you'll basically upset them. You want quiet cattle; you want cattle that are going to walk up to the ute and not be afraid of you. If you've got people who aren't familiar with how to treat livestock, you can actually end up upsetting your herd and making them much harder to muster because they won't want to come near human beings.

Other things that this inquiry is going to look at are 'options for the development of a fair national approach to access and acquisition'. These are excellent points to cover here. 'Options to maintain and ensure the rights of farmers and fishers to maintain and ensure productivity of agriculture and fisheries'—these are excellent points.

I like this one as well: 'power imbalance between traditional owners, farmers and fishers with governments and energy companies seeking to compulsorily acquire or access their land or fishing grounds'. Yet again my home town of Chinchilla was smack bang in the middle of all of this. Unfortunately, George Bender, my own cousin by marriage—he was married to my second cousin—committed suicide over this because felt he was shafted by the gas companies. You cannot have in small towns one farmer getting lots of money because of a good deal out of the gas company and another farmer being shafted by the gas company. It breeds tension within a small community. It's very important that everyone is compensated in a fair and equitable manner, otherwise you will breed tension between neighbours and within communities. We cannot have that.

It is not just compensation itself; it's also the neighbour. You might agree to having a transmission line or a gas well on your farm. You might want it as far away from the house as possible, so you put it on the boundary. That is obviously then going to impact the neighbour as well because it's on the neighbour's boundary as well. Do they want a transmission line or a gas well? We're experiencing that right now on the Jimbour Plains where we have perceived subsidence problems. I'm not familiar with the exact issue, but I certainly know the locals out there are concerned about it. The Jimbour Plains have some of the best cropping in Australia. They are getting subsidence. Farmers are understandably very concerned about that. We have to look at not just the people being compensated but also the impact on the neighbours and how they are treated.

What else are we going to look at here? The protection of flora and fauna, with particular emphasis on threatened species and habitat corridors. Yet again this is the crux of the issue about protecting the environment. There's this notion that somehow renewables are going to save the environment. They will not do that. It doesn't matter how many renewals you build they are not going to save the environment. If anything, they are a threat to the environment. This is interesting. I'm currently following a page on social media about the wind farms they're building off of New Jersey. A lot of whales are being washed up on the beaches there. There are more than normal. It's very difficult to prove that that is from the construction of the wind turbines. Yet again it raises the question: are we actually looking at what will happen if you go ahead and build lots of offshore wind farms in the Bass Strait and off the New South Wales coastline later on? These are legitimate concerns that should be addressed.

The Senate is a house of review. The role of the Senate is to ask questions. Yet again I put to Labor and the Greens: why are you opposing this inquiry? Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would deliver transparency, yet you don't want to go into the detail here of all of these renewables. You can't even explain how you are going to pay the cost of getting to 82 per cent renewals by 2030. Probably even more important than the cost is the actual social and environmental impacts—the impacts on both the environment and our communities.

Once the transmission lines are built and the solar panels are built they will be there for a long time. Once they have reached their use-by date, how do we get the big wind turbines transported off the land? Who's responsible for that? Is it going to be the responsibility of the farmer or is it going to be the responsibility of the energy producer? How are they going to get these massive concrete blocks out of the ground? You don't want concrete blocks sprinkled around your farmland for ever and a day, and they will be if they're not removed at the time. Good luck trying to get rid of them.

It's the same with solar panels. These things are ugly. I'm sorry, but I think these things are ugly. You might get away with it on top of the roof of a residential house, but out on the farmlands it's just disgusting. It breaks my heart to think that we're going to be littering the countryside and the environment with these things under the notion that somehow this is the way forward.

I think this is a fantastic motion. I think this inquiry is desperately needed. I'm incredibly disappointed in Labor and the Greens, because, if they genuinely cared about the environment, if they genuinely cared about regional communities, they would agree to this motion because there are legitimate concerns here that need to be addressed. I think regional Australia has every right to expect these issues to be addressed before we go ahead with this transition to 82 per cent renewables by 2030—ha, ha, ha! But that's what you guys signed up for, so show that you actually care about regional Australia, show that you actually care about the environment and actually approve this motion.

Vote for this motion, and actually put your voting power where your mouth is when you say you care about the environment, because, if you don't vote for this, this is going up on social media. I'd love to telegraph to the world, but that's all I've got. I'm going to call you out on your hypocrisy, because that's what this is. If you do not support this motion, if you do not support this inquiry, it is blatant hypocrisy on environmental concerns, on community concerns and on accountability and transparency concerns.