Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

Is always a joy to hear Senator Ayres with this fanciful sort of commentary. It is fanciful. There are unicorns. There are fairies in the bottom of the garden. There are a few bogeymen. But it's always entertaining and, for that reason, we let him run on. What he didn't reflect on is something that I feel passionately about and that the National party, the Liberal Party, One Nation and people who understand this country feel passionate about, and that is water—the lifeblood of this country.

To hear these outrageous statements about dam-building from Senator Ayres reminded me of soon after the last federal election when Labor got in and I wept. I wept when I heard that the nine years of work that we had put in to establish proper funding for serious water projects, particularly in my part of the country in northern Australia, would be scrapped overnight for no reason, because that would remove the opportunity for the northern part of the country to build great agricultural projects, to secure regional and rural communities, and to advance manufacturing and the development of whatever we wanted, because we would have secure water. But overnight the minister removed that opportunity for northern Australia, ripped it away, because the Labor Party comrades, whether in Queensland, the Northern Territory or in Western Australia, made sure that dams weren't built. Under our Constitution, the states do have water control, and they made sure that these important water projects weren't built. In fact it was Mr Shorten from the other place who was in my home town and who told people there that the Labor Party didn't believe in dams because they were 19th-century technology. I wonder what he thinks captures water to store it during the times when it rains and to use it in times when it doesn't. But this is just one example. I don't want to get stuck on this, because Senator Ayres has led us up a garden path, and I've been distracted by his gobbledygook, but I do want to talk about water.

I rise to speak on the motion that proposes that the Environment and Communications References Committee inquire into the proposed carbon capture and storage project in the Great Artesian Basin. I grew up on subartesian water. I've probably pulled more windmills and seen more pumpjacks and broken rods and that sort of technology than most people. I understand how important the water supply and the security that it brings are to a farmer, to a grazier and to these communities. When I was in the Queensland government, I fought passionately and strongly for appropriate regulations to provide a balance for agriculture and CSG, when that was being developed in Queensland just over 10 years ago.

The establishment of the GasFields Commission provided that kind of transparency and the ability for farmers and graziers to make decisions on their land, on their farms, about what was good for the community. I thought that was work that was really well done. Properly managed, these things can coexist. It results in more successful communities. It results in money coming into the communities. It results in more services, more hospitals, more teachers and more police that service the agricultural communities in those regions. But it is important to get it right. How shocking it is to discover that the state Labor government in Queensland supported this trial project while at the very same time the other government department in that Labor government was giving out water licences to farmers. So, on the one hand, they're saying: 'This water is not potable and this is an excellent place for you to do this project. This is where you should do this trial.' But on the other hand, they're saying to farmers: 'Pay up, and we'll give you a licence.' That is shocking. That is a betrayal of good government that allows for these important industries to develop. And it was a lie. It was a lie to farmers and a lie to graziers, because at the same time they were saying that this was unpotable water that was suitable for this project.

We have been talking about a CCS project being trialled in a region where it should not have been allowed to be trialled. It's as simple as that. In regard to CCS, I'm sorry to differ with you on this, Senator Hanson, but I do believe in the CCS technology, mostly because I've just come back from the Canadian mining conference—30,000 miners from around the world—where they are using CCS to compete with us in places like Canada and where they've been using the technology for some time. They're using the technology in appropriate places—not in places where farmers are drawing on the same aquifer. That is not an appropriate place. In time, I believe that we will be able to have a successful industry in CCS in places offshore like those that Santos and INPEX are proposing.

But I don't want to be distracted from that because the point of the debate tonight is that we utilise a Senate inquiry—a very appropriate place—to shine a bright light onto this trial technology in an agricultural aquifer. This is the right place to do it, and it is for this reason that the coalition—the Liberal Party and the National Party, which fights every day for farmers, for agriculture and for the right to grow food; this is about growing food, the most important job on the face of the earth—stand and support this reference. We believe this is good government. This is transparency. This is the sort of transparency that you don't see from this government, which carefully asks people like leaders of church groups to sign non-disclosure agreements before they consider legislation and which introduces consultation on environmental legislation but says that you can't take the papers away and you have to transcribe by hand hundreds of pages of legislation. That's not transparency. That's outrageous. That is the darkest cloak of secrecy. What we believe in is a Senate inquiry.

Debate interrupted.