Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Environment and Communications References Committee for inquiry and report by 1 May 2024:

The implications of Glencore's proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) project by its subsidiary, Carbon Transport and Storage Corporation (CTSCo), in the Great Artesian Basin, with particular reference to:

(a) the environmental impact assessment process and the adequacy of the project's approval by federal and state regulatory bodies, including the decision not to classify the project as a controlled action under national environment law;

(b) the potential risks and impacts of the project on the groundwater quality within the Great Artesian Basin, especially concerning the findings related to the acidification of groundwater and mobilisation of heavy metals such as lead and arsenic;

(c) the scientific basis and transparency of the data supporting the project's safety claims, including the robustness of fieldwork, data, and analysis presented by CTSCo and critiques by independent hydrogeologists and aqueous geochemists;

(d) the potential socioeconomic impacts on agriculture and regional communities, relying on the Great Artesian Basin for water, including an assessment of the project's impact on existing and future water use rights;

(e) the consultation processes undertaken with stakeholders, including farmers, Indigenous landholders, environmental groups, and the broader public, and the adequacy of these processes in addressing stakeholder concerns;

(f) the potential precedent set by allowing CCS projects within the Great Artesian Basin and its implications for future projects, considering Australia's strategic interests in preserving its largest groundwater system;

(g) the role of CCS technology in Australia's broader climate change mitigation strategy, including an evaluation of its efficacy, risks and alternatives; and

(h) any other related matters.

Today I seek to refer a matter to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee that has profound implications for the future of regional Australia. For some time now farmers have been raising very serious concerns about a trial to capture carbon dioxide and store it in the Great Artesian Basin. This three-year trial has been proposed by a subsidiary of the multinational coalmining company Glencore.

The trial proposes to capture waste carbon dioxide emissions from the Millmerran Power Station in Queensland, turn it to a supercritical fluid and inject up to 330,000 tonnes of it into the Precipice Sandstone aquifer. This aquifer is more than two kilometres deep. It's inside the Great Artesian Basin, one of the most important natural resources in Australia. If the Great Artesian Basin was a country, it would be the 17th-largest in the world at more than 1.7 million square kilometres. It's one of the largest groundwater basins on the planet, with almost 65 million gigalitres of water—enough to fill the Sydney Harbour about 130,000 times over. It mainly covers Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, and part of the Northern Territory.

Long before British settlement, springs of water emanating from the basin allowed Indigenous communities to travel and trade and survive in Australia. When it was discovered by settlers in the 1870s, it was quickly realised it was a vital water resource for the dry Australian interior. Since then it has been essential in the development of our agricultural and mining industries, and for hundreds of regional, rural and remote communities. Water from the basin supports production worth almost $13 billion a year. It remains as essential today as it has always been. Australia is, after all, the driest inhabited continent on earth, and every source of fresh water is important. This is why I'm disturbed by the proposal to inject waste CO2 into the basin's water. I'm disturbed that, while recent research has improved our knowledge of the basin, there is still much to learn, and this makes for uncertain risks when introducing foreign material to the basin's groundwater.

Even the proponent company's own commissioned study found the project could cause levels of lead and arsenic in the groundwater to rise hundreds of times beyond the safe drinking water guidelines. This would be due to increased acidity caused by the injection of supercritical CO2 leaching these heavy metals from the surrounding rocks and spreading it throughout aquifers in the basin. I'm also advised by expert geologist Emeritus Professor Ian Plimer of the University of Melbourne that this could result in significant clogging of the cracks and fractures in the surrounding rocks, thereby limiting the places where bores can be placed or reducing the rate of flow in other bores.

I acknowledge that Glencore's subsidiary Carbon Transport and Storage Corporation has stressed that the groundwater in the precipice sandstone aquifer is already non-potable and so deep it would be expensive for a farmer to sink a bore. I acknowledge that some of the science says the risks of the project are minimal and manageable. However, the science on the basin is not complete and our farmers have been down this road before with fracking. They have legitimate concerns about the contamination of groundwater in the basin, so much so that Queensland's AgForce organisation has this week announced it would launch a legal challenge.

AgForce says it will seek a judicial review of the decision taken in 2022 that found that the project did not need to be assessed under the EPBC Act—the environmental protection act. AgForce says confidence in our food supply is at genuine risk because of the proposal. I agree with them, although there are many more genuine risks to our food supply thanks to Labor's multiple attacks on Australia's world-leading agricultural sector. Let's list some of them: ending live sheep exports that support thousands of regional jobs; crippling energy and fuel costs; farmland polluted by 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines, thanks to Labor's suicidal net zero policy; Labor's terrible 'closing the loopholes' legislation, destroying casual and seasonal employment and forcing a great deal more red and green tape on farmers; and Labor and the Greens forcing more water from irrigators through devastating buybacks that destroy communities in the Murray-Darling Basin for no environmental benefit.

Labor has an opportunity here to show some belated support for our struggling farmers. Labor has an opportunity here to protect one of the most important natural resources in this country. It's clear to me that a great deal less potential harm would come from simply letting the CO2 enter the atmosphere than pumping it into the Great Artesian Basin. At least it would benefit the crops and pastures being grown by our farmers. This project is a bit of a canary in the coalmine. Its success or failure will have implications for similar projects in the future. We know there are already some existing applications. Glencore is just the start. Glencore is the first, but how many others will be given the right to dispose of their CO2 in the basin?

Of course none of this would be happening if the major parties weren't grovelling to climate change zealots and pursuing the net zero fantasy. This fantasy drives policy into ridiculous outcomes like vast areas of pristine rainforest being cleared for wind farms. Wind turbines—they're not a 'farm'. To call them that is destroying the word 'farm'. They are wind turbines, and they are destroying the environment in order to save it. What a joke that is! The Greens cry out the loudest in this place about the environment, yet I don't hear them screaming out against the wind turbines that are actually resulting in the clearing of hundreds of thousands of acres of land. There is clearing of rainforest, destroying habitats and flora and fauna, and you say nothing about it. It does more damage, but you keep putting them up. Then there is the fear of fire, if they catch fire—which they do.

Then you destroy prime agricultural land to put up your solar panels. That's another disgraceful act that I see happening throughout Queensland and the rest of the country. Farmers can't clear the land to grow crops, but you can clear the land to put in solar panels. There is no problem with that. Let's clear the land. You stop people from moving a tree off their land for some reason or other, but let's clear the land to put up solar panels and wind turbines. None of this is saving anything. It's not helping to reduce the world's carbon dioxide emissions, which is supposed to be the ultimate goal of the net zero fantasy—and fantasy is exactly what it is. Global emissions continue to rise.

It is not saving us any money. It costs us billions in taxpayer subsidies and it is driving more Australian households into poverty, thanks to record-high energy costs. We went through this carbon capture stuff before with last year's sea dumping bill. The idea that natural formations can form permanent, perfectly sealed storages from which CO2 won't eventually escape is ludicrous. Nature is not that perfect, despite what the Greens would have us believe. They are on about it again today, crying their crocodile tears about 2023 being the hottest year on record. Since when? They only started taking records in around 1910. The end of the 18th century here was so hot. You don't want that recorded, because it would prove that temperatures were hotter then than they are today. We didn't have industrialisation. We didn't have the built-up cities, so actually you have to just get rid of all those records that go back only as far as 1910.

Planet Earth is more than 4½ billion years old and the evidence is undeniable that it has been both much hotter and much cooler in the past due to influences that have nothing to do with us humans. We have been on Earth for only—what, 300,000 years? But that doesn't stop Greens activists from traumatising our children with confected tales of global doom, and the Labor Party have gone along with this as well. As I've said, the sea dumping bill debate last year was disgraceful, and I spoke about it. There is no place in the world where it has worked—where it has stayed captured. We went along with this. When I asked the minister if commercial arrangements could be made with other countries to bring their rubbish out here, she wasn't interested. She said, 'No, those are commercial arrangements with the companies and nothing to do with us.' It has everything to do with the Labor Party, because you have allowed it in your legislation for sea dumping to happen in Australia. That is why it has a lot to do with you.

It is the same with allowing CO2 to be dumped in the Great Artesian Basin. We don't know the risks. The science is not clear on this. If you allow this to happen, you could destroy the Queensland farming sector, communities, towns' drinking water—we don't know. Are you prepared to play around with that? Are you prepared to take the risk? Well, most of you will probably be going out the back door in the next few years, so it would be no concern of yours: 'Let the future generations deal with that; it is no concern of ours.' You're more interested in the next election, in getting yourselves elected again to protect your jobs without looking to the future of this country and at what is happening.

Five mayors across Queensland have actually said they are against this. They are saying, 'Don't allow this to happen; stop.' Glencore is just the start of it. If they go through this trial and are allowed to dump then that will be the start of all these other organisations dumping CO2. As I said, it would be 330 tonnes of this supercritical waste and nobody here can tell me that would not be a risk. It is one hell of a risk.

We only have so much water on this earth, so much water in Australia. The government have done nothing to improve our water supply in this nation. You haven't built more dams or anything. You have let it slide. You are for high immigration. You have not prepared for the future, for increased population growth. If you allow this to happen and this destroys our artesian basin, what is your plan then? Oh, that's right—Labor never have a second plan; they don't know where to go after that. You always blame the previous government—it is their fault—for what has happened and what has gone wrong, because you don't think ahead. You have no idea how to plan for the future. You are absolutely hopeless at what you do.

I'm putting this up for the vote. Common sense should prevail here, that you do not allow this to go ahead, that you stop it from happening. I hope the Greens are on board with this. If they don't support this motion for it to go to an inquiry, they're hypocrites. They're absolute hypocrites if this is not supported. They're always screaming about the environment, always screaming about fracking and always screaming about the damage to our country and all the rest of it. So I hope that the Greens actually vote for this to go to an inquiry so we can have an investigation into this. I hope Senator David Pocock is watching. Senator Pocock has always got control of the Senate here. I hope that he sees common sense and understands that it needs to go to an inquiry so that we can actually have a greater understanding of the implications that may happen.

I thank Professor Ian Plimer for the information that he's given me. This is a man with real knowledge who understands the science. He has informed me of the implications and what could happen. I am more prepared to listen to him than I am prepared to listen to the Labor Party in this chamber, who put spin on so many of the policies and wipe their hands of it and couldn't care less, because it's in the too-hard basket. I wish we'd get some people with some knowledge in this place. Honestly—the incompetence. You have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to climate change and what's actually happening. You're just fearmongering.