John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In continuing my speech on this legislation, I would like to clarify some points made by the member for New England. He made a comment in the other place that the coalition had stopped this legislation from proceeding through the Senate. I do not know how we could do that. If people want to count the numbers, there are 34 coalition senators, which does not get you to 39 to control this place.

It was the government that brought on the legislation on the referendum of local government, so how could Mr Windsor say that this particular bill we are debating now has been delayed because of Senator Joyce and others? That is outrageous. I am sure Senator Fifield would agree with me. How is No. 34 greater than No. 38 or 39? It is ridiculous to suggest such a thing, given that Senator Joyce clearly stated in his speech that we would be supporting this legislation. I wanted to clarify that for the record. For the member for New England to say that we are holding this bill up is absolute rubbish. In fact, if Mr Windsor spent more of his time seeing what is going on over here and how the legislation is going through—and read some Hansards, instead of spending more time in the Prime Minister's office—he might have some idea of what is happening in the Senate.

Mr Windsor shed crocodile tears for our farmers. Just recently, there was an agricultural and veterinary chemicals bill. This bill includes a re-registration system that adds no extra triggers for chemical review but adds another expensive layer of registration, with a periodic recheck of the existing trigger funded by industry. The bill will add $9 million a year in extra costs. Our farmers are huge users of chemicals. You cannot simply grow weeds and wheat together; you grow one or the other. You cannot simply leave your sheep—especially in the northern areas, where it is wet during summer—unprotected from barber's pole worm and other worms. They are simply going to die. Their production will be reduced enormously.

Farm chemicals have been part of agriculture for many years and have increased our productivity and output enormously. Just last Sunday week I planted a small acreage of lucerne and oats to bale some hay. My concern is the ryegrass in that paddock. Because the rain came next day, I did not have time to spray. I wish I had. We will just have to hope for the best.

As far as Mr Windsor and his crocodile tears for farmers are concerned, he backs these changes by the government. They were driven by the Greens, who seem to have most control of the government. The bill will add $9 million in extra costs to farmers' chemicals.

The National Farmers' Federation, state farm bodies such as NSW Farmers and AUSVEG, all oppose the legislation. From what I am hearing, Mr Windsor gave every indication he would support the coalition to oppose the bill, but then the Prime Minister obviously called in a favour and he did what he had to do, and has done around 350 times in this parliament—he voted with the government. AUSVEG, which represent Australia's 9,000 vegetable and potato growers, were so incensed they put out a media release headed 'Tony Windsor sells out Australian farmers', and I will quote a couple of lines: 'In an exemplary display of putting personal politics before good policy, Mr Windsor has succeeded in punching every farmer in the country below the belt.' That is what it said in the media release. Not only will this bill increase costs for Australian farmers, it will also mean that the industry may lose access to essential crop protectants due to a re-registration system that will allow political pressure rather scientific fact to determine what treatments are available for farmers and their needs.

As I said, chemicals play a major role in the very survival of our animals, in the production of our wheat and cereal grains and many other crops. So, here we have this water bill in front of us which is designed to protect the underground water in relation to coal seam gas and mining industries. I have said all along that you cannot destroy the environment for future generations. In fact, it was the National Party in November 2011 that clearly stated that there was to be no coal seam gas on prime agricultural land. Of course, it is up to the states to determine the prime agricultural land. I am well aware of the old fact that possession turns sand into gold. Every farmer thinks their property is prime agricultural land, because they are proud of it, and that is why they perform and produce so well. As far as food security goes, this is what this legislation is about: to see that we do not damage our food-producing land for the future generations.

I would also make another note that Mr Windsor, if he is very concerned about food security, abandoned the farmers of the sea—our fishermen—when the coalition tried to get the marine parks disallowance through. Australia has the world's third largest ocean territory and harvests just 28 kilograms of seafood per square kilometre per year from our oceans. Compare that to other countries. I would like to see what they harvest in Thailand, probably about 700 kilograms per square kilometre. So, we have locked up more of our sea farm, if I can call it that, where we actually carry out our fishing to feed Australians. What does that mean? That means we will be importing more seafood into our nation, and, of course, jobs and wealth will be gone. The amount of seafood that we import now, especially from Thailand, is quite amazing, as I mentioned.

I notice that Mr Windsor and his cohort Mr Oakeshott, the member for Lyne, both proclaim 'the hung parliament has been a success'. Well, what a success it has been! Have a look at what is going on now. It is more about who is Prime Minister and the division in the Australian Labor Party than running the nation, and no doubt there will be more of that this week and next week until the guillotine does fall on the Prime Minister. Mr Oakeshott actually described this parliament as being 'alive'. Being 'alive' is an absolute embarrassment and a total disgrace to our nation. All we read in the papers is who is going to be Prime Minister next week. Perhaps Senator Feeney might be able to give us a clue. He might be able to tip us off as to which direction they are pushing. Are they going to push the Prime Minister over the cliff or are they going to keep her? Time will tell. I am sure all in this place will be watching this with a lot of interest. Do not worry about governing for the country, let's just line up another 130 pieces of legislation and rush them through. Whoever is the maintenance man or woman around this place, oil up the guillotine, because it is going to be overworked next week. It will be dropping and it will be up and down like a yoyo as the bills come through. I suggest they get the Innoxa and the CRC out and lubricate the sides of it, to prevent it from overheating with friction, because that is what we will see next week. What we will see next week is the guillotine—up and down it will go. Of course, it will be supported by the Greens. Their history of rushing legislation through this place without proper debate is already on the record.

At the weekend we had the state conference of the New South Wales National Party. The conference reaffirmed that the maximum benefit should flow to regional New South Wales from any royalties derived from coal seam gas production. It is amazing. As I said in the first part of this speech on 16 May, the Nationals are aware of the huge concern in relation to coal seam gas, but we will not get caught up in the hysteria whipped up by the Greens and the Independents. We have stated our position clearly on the protection of prime agricultural land and a financial return to the farmers, but we are also mindful of the need to ensure our future energy supplies. We have huge storages of coal seam gas and other gases in Australia, but what are we doing for energy? We are relying on imported fuels. New South Wales currently imports 95 per cent of the gas it consumes from interstate. The majority of contracts for the supply of gas to the 1.1 million New South Wales consumers will expire within the next five years. A report finds that, as early as 2017, New South Wales's traditional sources of gas, South Australia, from the Moomba gas fields, Victoria and Queensland, will increasingly be used to meet rising demand from both the Queensland LNG project and gas fired electricity generation.

So we do need energy, and we will not be seeing farmers return to the time of the draught horse, the Clydesdale or the single-furrow and moldboard plough; we need to grow food. We need to produce not only for Australians but for the world. But we need to protect our land to see that future generations can look back and say, 'When they entered into these energy-sourcing projects, they looked after the land.'

I was very pleased to recently visit a coalmine at Mudgee, where I saw the rehabilitation. The topsoil was put aside, the coal was taken out and then the soil was put back. The pasture was improved—it was actually better than when they started and I commended the miners on the magnificent job they did of rehabilitation. Of course, there are many areas in the Hunter Valley where I think the rehabilitation has been an absolute disgrace. So, if we are going to go mining, we must protect the land for future generations—that is my whole argument.

As far as this bill goes, it is based around more powers under the EPBC Act for the federal government, but they should be working with their state colleagues. We already have the EPAs and all the stringent regulations at a state level. Under the Australian Constitution, the land is in the control of the Crown, the state; but here we have more regulations coming in from Canberra.

As a fifth-generation farmer, I say that protecting our environment is vital, especially our land—and, sadly, it does not get enough attention. I believe the greatest asset in this country is its topsoil, the soil that is needed to grow the food not only for us but for millions upon millions of people in the years to come. The world will rely on Australia to provide food to so many people around the world and of course it is a huge export industry for us. So the whole idea is to protect everything for the future of generations of Australians to come. I say that as a grandparent now. We need to protect our land and keep it healthy and viable, especially the water under that land. That is what this bill is about—protecting the water to see that there is no pollution of that water because, if it is damaged, how can it be fixed? It would be a difficult problem to fix.

I know there are coal seam gas wells in Queensland that have been operating for many years, just like in Western Sydney. Thankfully, there have been no reports of any damage. I have spoken to Origin Energy and to Santos, and they are of the attitude that they will not go on to a farm if the farmer does not want them on their property, and that is fair enough in my book as well. The farmers own the land, although the banks might have a share in it, of course.

This legislation is not opposed by the coalition. Let us hope that it contributes to preserving our environment and our food-producing land for generations to come.

Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with my Senate colleague Senator Williams in rising today to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment Bill 2013. This bill will amend the EPBC Act to create a matter of national environmental significance for coal seam gas and large coalmining developments which are likely to have a significant impact on a water resource. Other matters of national environmental significance include World Heritage sites, nuclear actions and wetlands of international importance—for example, our Ramsar wetlands. Whilst in South Australia we do not have the kind of coalseam gas development that we are seeing in New South Wales and Queensland, when I first came to this place in 2011 I sat on an inquiry into the management of the Murray-Darling Basin, and in its interim report to this place we handed down a report focused specifically on the impact of mining coalseam gas on the management of the Basin. During the course of the inquiry I saw firsthand some of the coalseam gas developments near towns like Narrabri, Roma and Dalby.

We on this side of the chamber understand how costly it is to do business in this country. We know how to do business, because most of us have been in business—unlike most of those on the other side, perhaps with the exception of an old truckie and a couple of lawyers who previously sat in union-sponsored law firms. We know how big an impact government regulation and red tape have on industry. Over-regulation continues to strangle our business and to drive up costs in this country. As an Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Survey showed, 73 per cent of businesses report greater increases in regulation over the last two years. And now 60 per cent of business spends over $5,000 a year just meeting the ever-increasing regulatory requirements under this Gillard Labor government, who have abandoned business in this country, if May's federal budget is anything to go by. Sad but true: since coming to office, the Rudd-Gillard government has added nearly 800 pieces of legislation, published nearly 21,000 regulations and repealed just 104. That is not one in one out, as was originally promised by Labor; that is 200 in for every one out. This is why we on this side are committed to cutting $1 billion worth of red tape out of the economy, and I can assure anyone reading or listening to this contribution that we will deliver. My Senate colleague in the chamber, Senator Sinodinos, former chief of staff to Prime Minister Howard, will deliver this, if the people of Australia put their trust in the coalition on 14 September.

Australia has a broad range of comprehensive environmental laws—and so it should; we have so much to protect. However, this legislation adds another layer of bureaucratic red tape, and it will increase approval times and make Australia a less desirable place in which to invest. Further tax changes in the budget include the effects on exploration costs and thin capitalisation rules. That will also hurt the oil and gas industry's international competitiveness, further driving investment away from Australia. The interim report from the inquiry into the management of the Murray-Darling Basin highlighted how difficult regulations currently are, even without this bill. I quote from the interim report:

The gas companies have made much of the extremely demanding regulatory environment in Australia. In submissions to the committee, QGC—

which is wholly owned by the BG Group—

noted that the:

QCLNG Project was assessed for environmental and social impact under Queensland and Commonwealth legislation in a process that began in 2008 and took more than two years. The environmental and social impact assessment totalled more than 12,000 pages.

AP LNG has described the conditions imposed on it as "unprecedented":

… the Coordinator-General has, in addition to existing legislative requirements, imposed a set of conditions that have not been used to previously regulate project impacts in Queensland.

They were:

Conditions imposed under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 for each of the three components of the Australia Pacific LNG Project (gas fields, pipeline and LNG facility) total 261.

The large number of conditions is indicative of the many complex issues, challenges and uncertainties that are presented in regulating this industry.

In short, this bill means the Commonwealth will duplicate the state's approval processes. The protection of water is, rightly, the responsibility of the states. But, now, as a further checking process, the states will be provided with an expert panel—and this is appropriate—to provide the further testing that the community is demanding. The coalition did support the implementation of this expert panel, so let the panel do their work and report for all Australians.

The oil and gas industry is today responsible for more than 30c in every dollar of private sector investment. The industry is currently investing around $200 billion over five years—that is more than $1,200 per second—in new projects that will pay billions every year to governments and create more than 100,000 new jobs. We need to strike a balance between industry and the environment. We would never give up on the environment, we would never compromise the environment, but we must understand that it does house the resources we need to grow this country.

This bill questions the approach taken in targeting specific industries. The coal seam gas industry is an important part of our nation's future prosperity. It is important for jobs in many areas and it has to involve sensible practices. But the last thing any sensible government would want to do is stop this industry in its tracks by imposing impediments to investment by bogging down approval times on duplicated topics and escalating costs without an eye to common sense. We know that the Greens, on the other side, in their coalition with the government, will do anything in their power to stop this industry. They are diametrically opposed to it and they have, on hundreds of occasions in this place, done anything they could do to put an impediment in the coal seam gas industry's way.

A sensible government must find a way for industry and environmental practices to be balanced appropriately. Industry does not need another quick fix-approach which adds red tape to the impending developments that this country so sorely needs. Industry needs to be able to flourish in an economic and regulatory environment of certainty and strong policy decision making. The industry view reflects reservations towards the bill, with its many continued changes and lack of long-term foresight. The Australian Coal Association highlighted the burden on Australian industry, expressing disappointment in the 'regressive policy making', by saying:

At a time when we should be sharpening Australia’s competitive edge by improving the efficiency of our regulatory system, the Government has offered a knee-jerk reaction to campaigning by environment groups which adds another layer of green tape without delivering any environmental benefit …

Are we going to simply ignore this view of peak industry associations which are so important to Australia's economic prosperity?

The Senate inquiry that looked specifically into this bill further highlighted the high levels of discontent amongst the adverse effects of CSG and coal mining on the availability and quality of water resources. It further highlighted that assessment and approval processes for these developments are inadequate.

The inquiry I sat on highlighted just how complex an issue the coal seam gas industry is. While there are many significant economic benefits for rural and regional towns in terms of jobs and economic activity from coal seam gas there are also perceived and real negative impacts—like the doubling of the population of small towns overnight, and the social problems that flow from that. There are issues surrounding coal seam gas mining on prime agricultural land and, as the content of this bill suggests, on water. But flowing from that was an allocation of $150 million to define the real issues and apply solutions for all approval authorities, which includes state governments. But I will talk more on that later.

We heard from a lot of scientists and scientific bodies, including the CSIRO, about potential impacts of this kind of mining on underground water bodies and aquifers. A lot is still not known, which makes it difficult to regulate or make easy decisions about this. Most alarmingly, evidence was given in the inquiry of the clear lack of consultation in formulating the bill. What we need is a better understanding of the issues arming the existing approval authorities. We need an ability to streamline their scrutiny of the real issues rather than duplicating the status quo. It simply does not make for improved legislation.

This is made all the more difficult by the short life of this industry, with individual wells only lasting about 15 years, on average. So the gas is likely to be exhausted over the period of the next 50 years. We must be careful not to damage the prime agricultural land and aquifers for the next 500 years. But without economic activity to generate wealth we will not have the revenue to look after the environment and to conduct the research into the impact of this industry.

We on this side of the chamber are concerned about the absence of proper process in arriving at the introduction of this legislation as highlighted by the coalition senators in their additional comments to the final report of the EPBC amendment bill inquiry. As has become a hallmark of this government, there was no consultation undertaken on this bill before it was introduced into the parliament. Both the Australian Coal Association and the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association drew attention to the absence of a regulation impact statement. They were quoted final report of the inquiry:

...we are particularly concerned with the way this legislation has been rushed into parliament, without any consultation or the preparation of a regulatory impact statement. There is no justification that we can see for such a gross failure of process and, accordingly, we welcome the Senate committee's close scrutiny of the bill …

Another hallmark of this government is to rush, rush, rush and that does not make for good policy. Putting all the key industry groups offside is another hallmark of this government.

As I have noted, the government have put aside $150 million over five years for a new independent expert scientific committee—and we support that—to provide scientific advice to government about coal seam gas and large coal mining approvals where they have significant impacts on water. The committee will commission bioregional assessments and research into the impacts of coal seam gas and coal mine developments on water resources and methods for minimising those impacts. This is a big concern across eastern Australia and anywhere where this mining is contemplated. But $150 million buys a lot of research. It is research that has not been done in the past, but will be done now. The allocation of these funds is overdue. It is about time. Let the independent scientific committee get on with that job.

Further to that, there are a number of ongoing studies, including the National Groundwater Assessment Initiative, the Healthy Headwaters program and the research looking into the Namoi Catchment in New South Wales. The science and data generated from this research needs to be made public to better inform decision-making and policy creation so that we are not making decisions in the dark or uninformed. This is the empowerment that we are looking for throughout this entire chamber. I urge all senators to support Senator Birmingham, representing the coalition. The coalition's amendments in this chamber look to counter the member for New England's amendments. Mr Windsor's amendments basically attempted to prevent bilateral assessments for the proposed coal seam gas trigger. Allowing assessments is a key way to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses while maintaining environmental standards. The New South Wales Minerals Council executive, Mr Stephen Galilee, recommended the federal government should reconsider their backward decision on the legislation. He said:

It is extremely disappointing that in an election year the Federal Government and Tony Windsor are seeking to create the impression that the State based assessment process isn't good enough. This is completely wrong. Water is already a fundamental aspect of the assessment process for mining projects in New South Wales.

Mr Windsor should also heed the comments from the National Farmers Federation, who have deep concerns about the potential for this bill to be extended to agriculture in the future. I quote from the NFF, who said:

Water is a critical factor for our farmers, and our strong concern is that this bill could actually have perverse negative outcomes for our agricultural sector. What may, on first glance, look like a win for farmers in the short-term could actually have long-term unintended consequences for our current, and future, farmers.

Coal seam gas offers significant economic benefits for Australia, particularly for rural and regional Australia. The industry must have the support of the community in recognition of its generation of billions of export dollars and new jobs. However, we must be careful to weigh up the impacts—I attest to that. In assessing coal seam gas projects, we must be careful not to burden the industry with additional and unnecessary regulation when there is a far more credible path to follow than the legislation in its current form.

I hope that all good senators embrace the coalition's amendments, which make very good sense. Sadly, good sense seems to be a rare commodity in dealing with enterprise in this Gillard Labor-Green's government administration. This morning, there are rumours amid the halls of this place that Minister Burke is wandering around the offices of the crossbenchers trying to do a deal—another grubby deal—proposed by the Greens by incorporating shale into this legislation. We will wait with interest to see what comes out of that. I would have thought that those on the other side should be worried about trying to fix the economy rather than be worried about who is going to lead them through the next pieces of legislation.

I urge all senators here to look at Senator Birmingham's amendments rather than look at the pantomime which is going on quite publicly in this place. I urge you to embrace those amendments and get this legislation through. (Time expired)

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must acknowledge—and I am sure my colleague Senator Edwards would have acknowledged if he had realised—that we have Mr Windsor from the House of Representatives in the gallery, listening closely, I hope, to the comments being made by the coalition on ways that this piece of disrespectful legislation could be improved, if it must be put to the Senate at all. I would like to quote the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, from April 2012:

Look, what we want to work towards here is a streamlined system, so that projects don’t go through two layers of assessment for no real gain.

And so the classic examples that are brought by business is where people have gone through sequential assessments, so it’s double the time, things that have been required for the first assessment are required in a slightly modified form for the second assessment, so they don’t even get the benefits of just uplifting the work and re-presenting it, it’s got to be re-done.

That is a quote from the Prime Minister in April 2012, making comments that the coalition very much agrees with and demonstrating, perhaps briefly, an understanding of the costs that are imposed on business when we replicate and duplicate requirements across the state and federal bodies, and that regulation continues to be the issue there.

I referred to this bill earlier as 'disrespectful', and I continue to hold that view. It is disrespectful of the Hawke review, which went on for 10 years, looking in an independent way at issues that can be cogently and coherently brought into the environment biodiversity conservation bill, without this favouritism that infects the bill currently before us. It is also disrespectful of the legislation it seeks to amend. The EPBC Act is the main centrepiece of the federal environmental legislative framework. It covers eight matters of national environmental significance and sets guiding principles to protect and manage significant environmental and heritage items at a national level. The eight matters in which the federal government has jurisdiction are World Heritage sites, National Heritage sites, wetlands of international importance, nationally threatened species and ecological communities, migratory species, Commonwealth marine areas, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and nuclear actions. Now what we have is this weird little add-on, it might have made a bit of sense for the federal government to look at the whole matter of water resources and the impact of all types of mining on water resources, But no, not that—it will just look at the impact of coalseam gas and coalmining on water resources. And, as Senator Edwards pointed out earlier, apparently there are currently moves to include shale oil in there.

There would be absolutely no reason water resources should not be included in the EPBC, except that the states already do it. And we had the Prime Minister just 12 months ago as well as the environment minister, Mr Burke—even more recently—agreeing that duplication was not the way to go, that it is ridiculous that we have examinations done by state governments and then by federal governments, who are looking at the same things but looking at them differently. It was interesting to note that Senator Birmingham, during Senate estimates recently, managed to winkle out of the government the extraordinary costs of the EPBC Act. It is currently costing taxpayers $32 million just to administer the legislation, and it takes 210 staff. Next year, with the little changes that are going on—the water changes—it is going to add another $38½ million, and an extra $10 million a year after that. And they will need an extra 43 staff in this coming year simply to satisfy the requirements of Mr Windsor. The disrespect in this legislation is for the parliament, for the Senate, for the environmental community and for the mining industry.

What changed between 2012 and now? The only thing that the coalition can understand has changed is that Mr Windsor has been to see the Prime Minister and told her that he wants this legislation passed because it will be good for his re-election chances. That is what we understand has happened here. Even the Australian Network of Environmental Defenders Offices, a group that is highly in favour of environmental protection, do not agree with what is being done under this piecemeal piece of legislation. They say—

Senator Waters interjecting—

Senator Waters is interrupting. I was about to read the comments. The piecemeal approach is what very much upsets people in the environmental movement as well as other areas. Ms Walmsley from the Australian Network of Environmental Defenders Offices said:

I think the clear example of an ideal process would be the Hawke review. That was a 10-year review of the act. It was independent. The panellists on the Hawke review interviewed hundreds of industry, farmer and environmental groups. They did a thorough, independent review. They put out 71 recommendations. The government put out a response. There were so many great things in that package that could strengthen the bill and address a lot of these issues that are being incrementally addressed by really specific small bills that deal with really small issues …

Ms Walmsley went on to say:

So, no, I do not think it is ideal that the EPBC Act is being amended by piecemeal bills. I think we should embrace the opportunity to follow the Hawke review and actually do a proper amendment of the act itself to strengthen the Commonwealth role.

That, of course, would be the way to respect the roles of the Commonwealth and the state, to respect this act as an important piece of legislation—the centrepiece of our environmental legislation—and to respect the roles of the many organisations that should, and could, have been asked about their view on this legislation. None of them, of course, were asked.

The Prime Minister even managed to exempt this bill, looking at coal seam gas and coal mining effects on water resources, from the regulatory impact statement process. Why? Once again, to please, one presumes, Mr Windsor—to get this through quickly enough for Mr Windsor to be able to wave it around, presumably, as part of his re-election campaign. I do not think it is going to be enough. I think people are going to remember the concerns that they have.

Of course, we already have assessment of water and the impact on water resources done by the state governments. Another aspect of the disrespect here is the clear implication from a lot of the government material and from a lot of the environmental material that the state government processes are somehow wanting, somehow non-scientific, somehow politically polluted. And we have this major political pollution sitting before us right now. Why would the federal government, the Greens and the Independents have the disrespectful view that the states are somehow not up to checking the environmental impact on our water resources?

The Queensland state government—and, Madam Acting Deputy President, you will be aware that I represent the state of Queensland—through its Department of Natural Resource and Mines Coal Seam Gas Engagement and Compliance Plan 2013, is developing an overall strategy for the responsible oversight and regulation of the coal seam gas industry. In my view some of the coal seam gas miners, in the early days of exploration and negotiations, behaved like complete cowboys. Most of them have now tidied up their act. They have realised that the way to go about business is in a community that supports what you are doing, not in a community that is full of ridiculous rumours because you have not bothered to explain what you are doing and how you are doing it and are using bully boy tactics on people. Certainly the coal seam gas mining industry in some respects can only blame itself for the poor image it has had.

The Queensland government, as I said, has come up with a gas engagement and compliance plan, as have other state governments where it is relevant. The Department of Natural Resources and Mines in Queensland is fully committed to the sustainable use of Queensland natural resources. Giving evidence to a Senate hearing on this piece of legislation, the Queensland government said they always demanded a high level of compliance and their compliance evaluations will increase and become stricter as a result of this compliance plan. The Queensland government said: 'The federal Labor government, through the measures in this bill, are making it difficult for the Queensland government to boost the state's economy and keep it strong. The federal government are overriding the state's sovereign rights for their own political agenda.'

We have many other comments from many organisations that cannot understand why this legislation has been rushed through in this piecemeal way, or why we are looking at a really small issue, as the Environmental Defenders Network said, or why there was not real consultation about it, or a regulatory impact statement was not required or why it is completely doubling up on work that is already being done by the states. Apropos of the amendments that Mr Windsor moved in the House of Representatives, there is no ability in the bill for the state evaluation to be accepted by the federal government; it has to happen twice and it only has to happen around these areas.

The coalition supported the establishment last year of the expert scientific panel to further research the impact of coal seam gas mining on water because there are genuine community fears about it. So what was the sensible thing to do? The sensible thing to do was to set up the expert scientific panel to look at the problem and separate the scare-mongering and fear campaigns developed by the Greens, who are simply anti-business at any cost, from the realities and the possibility of what may harm water tables. And, of course, that is a major issue for Australia. The coalition supported the establishment of the expert scientific panel because we believe it was necessary to intelligently and respectfully look at the changes that need to be made.

Of course, the ink is scarcely dry on the development of the expert scientific panel and we have the government, prompted by Mr Windsor, coming up with a ninth matter of national significance to stick into this bill. Irrespective of the outcome of the panel's findings in terms of coal seam gas, it will be in the bill as a matter of national environmental significance. It is not reasonable to do this. Witness after witness to the Senate committee inquiry into this bill made that point. The Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia, Jennifer Westacott, said:

It flies in the face of what makes sense for jobs and the economy, while offering no tangible benefit to the environment.

If we could see that there was going to be a benefit for the environment in this then no-one would disagree with it happening. But it is a little job on the side, a little deal on the side, that has nothing to do with genuinely improving the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment Bill. It has everything to do with politics and particularly the politics of New England. The Australian Industry Group, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, the Clean Energy Council and the Energy Supply Association of Australia, in a joint submission to the inquiry, said:

… non-evidence based policies which are restricting the development of new energy sources may have significant negative consequences for the broader Australian community.

Knee jerk policies continue to undermine the development of energy projects within this country. This comes at a real cost—and this cost is borne by the Australian community, in jobs, in economic growth and ultimately higher energy bills.

The Australian Coal Association referred to this bill as regressive policy making. They said:

At a time when we should be sharpening Australia's competitive edge by improving the efficiency of our regulatory system, the Government has offered a knee jerk reaction to campaigning by environment groups which adds another layer of green tape without delivering environmental benefit.

Some people might like to suggest that most of those organisations that I quoted are, in fact, organisations that would be pro mining and anti environment. I would want to contest that. The issue is that these groups will operate within the law and they, quite reasonably, like to have the law settled before they invest their billions of dollars.

We have the situation with this bill, apropos, again of a deal that has been done, presumably, between Mr Windsor and the government that any approval not already in existence will be subjected to this new requirement. It is not just for new approvals; it is for anything that is currently in the pipeline. As an organisation seeking approval for a mine you may very well have done what was required by the state government in regard to water resources. You may very well have done everything that the federal government requires you to do under the existing legislation and be waiting for a tick-off, but, no, you will not get your tick-off now, you have to go back and do the evaluation of the resources the way that the federal government wants it done for water, which is presumably not going to be terribly different from the way the state government wanted it done. It is going to involve another level of cost, another level of testing and another level of wasted resources, which is another example of the ridiculous green tape that this government has developed around everything, very much because of their inability to see the need for jobs, to see the need for growth and to understand how to go about doing something like that.

Mr Windsor, as I said, should hang his head in shame at this piece of legislation. It is disrespectful of the Senate and of the parliament and of the environmental and mining movements.

Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I begin let me make the point in relation to this bill that the coalition has not sought, at any stage, to stall discussion, debate or passage of the bill. We are not seeking to create roadblocks, but we will not be silenced when it comes to our view about the unnecessary extra layers of red and green tape which this bill will add to what is already a very extensive area of red and green tape.

By way of background, one of the hats I wear is chairman of the Coalition Deregulation Taskforce. We have been looking at the issue of regulation and red tape across the country under this government. Kevin Rudd went to the 2007 election with a commitment: for every new regulation introduced, one would be taken out. One in, one out.

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

What a joke!

Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My colleague Senator Macdonald says, 'What a joke!' Indeed. It sounded so glib: one in, one out. It was very easy; it rolled off the tongue. Twenty-one thousand new regulations later and here we are with new layers of red and green tape. What is particularly galling for me is to have to acknowledge that people like Mr Windsor in the other place are adding to red and green tape, using their numbers in the House to add to red and green tape. They are people who should know better. They are people who claim to be in touch with their electorates and claim to understand the needs of small business, and here we are adding more red and green tape.

What is particularly galling is that we are doing this without even a regulatory impact assessment. This legislation is so important that it has been exempted from the process. So be it. If we were on the verge of nuclear war, we might not have a RIS about whether we go to war or not. We are not at war. Fortunately, we are living in a very peaceful country at a relatively peaceful time and we can take our time about these measures. But we are not being given that option. Industry is not being given the option of giving full advice on the costs and benefits of the legislation, and neither are other stakeholders.

I recognise that we are dealing with some very sensitive matters around the interplay between coal development, coal seam gas, the water table and the like. There are some very interesting scientific views about how that all plays out. Taken to their logical conclusion, those scientific views would essentially say that you would probably have to stop all industry. If we want to stop all industry in this regard, whether it is the coal seam gas industry or coal development, let's just be up-front about it and have a debate about all the consequences that flow from that, rather than have the debate we are having today, where people can use the power they have in the other place to impose on the government measures where the benefits have not been demonstrated to exceed the costs. It may be that the benefits do exceed the costs. We do not know that. There is no regulatory impact statement. The bill has been exempted from the possibility of that being done.

We are dealing with an act which both sides of politics fundamentally support. There is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which I have had some dealings with in the past, in a former life. Indeed, it was a coalition government that was involved in putting together the act in its current form. The whole purpose of the act was to recognise eight matters of national significance where the federal government had jurisdiction: World Heritage sites; national heritage sites; wetlands of international importance; nationally threatened species and ecological communities—and that does not include threatened species of Independents, Greens or others—migratory species; Commonwealth marine areas; the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park; nuclear actions. Get the drift? It has to have a national implication, a national consequence. That is why we have tiers of government. One tier of government is federal—that is us. There is another tier of government which looks after matters within the borders of states and is meant, subject to the Australian Constitution, to have sovereignty within the areas that are defined for the states. There are outside areas defined for the Commonwealth, and so on.

So, there you have it. This act is all about matters of national significance, and we are going to have a ninth matter of national environmental significance added to the act, which will apply to the actual—and this is where it has retrospective effect—or the likely significant impacts of 'coal seam gas development and large coalmining developments on a water source'. Why stop there? What is the logic of that? Why not any development that potentially has an impact on any water source or any other source in the communities, of one sort or another? It does not have to be water. Where is the rhyme or reason?

Ultimately, legislation has to have logic. This legislation in that sense has one logic—the logic of numbers or the logic of power: 'I can do this. I can impose this. I can show people that I can do this, therefore I will do it.' It is subject to no accountability, no cost-benefit test and no regulatory-impact assessment. People are right to say that these are controversial issues, but there also comes a point when you have to stand up for principle. The principle we used to have was one of subsidiarity, where we devolved power to the lowest level, whether it was local, state or federal government, depending on the significance of the issue. That is all out the window: 'That don't matter anymore; we do what is politically convenient, we 're seen to be doing it, and it doesn't cost us anything. And we can say that because we don't have a regulatory impact assessment to tell us what the costs might be.'

I recognise that there are some important scientific issues caught up in all of this, but what science teaches us is that there must be rigor around what you are hypothesising and how you test it. The policy equivalent of that, in this context, is the regulatory impact assessment—and we do not have that. That process also applies another logic to these circumstances. It provides for a more extended process of consultation, with affected stakeholders, whether they are industry or other. That sort of consultation is important if you want to take the community with you. Now, one section of the community, using its numbers, imposes its will. We do not get a settlement of the issues, we just get this pendulum back and forth depending on who is in power and has control. These matters never get looked at properly.

It is a pity that we have found ourselves caught in such a situation. Various stakeholders say various things. The Minerals Council of Australia said in its press release the legislation:

… shows that the Federal Government is more focused on increasing the bureaucratic constraints on the coal sector rather than creating the right regulatory environment to expand the industry; creating more jobs and national income.

There are some of you here who do not want to expand the industry or increase national income—and I am not looking at the opposition benches when I say that. That is understood. The Minerals Council of Australia also said:

The proposed changes will do nothing to enhance Australia's reputation as an investment destination. Project approval times in Australia are already well in excess of the international average and the plan put forward today will simply add to those delays for no environmental gain.

It is simply another layer of regulation.

The Prime Minister was very much alive to this duplication of Commonwealth and state processes in the environmental space. Indeed, it appeared at one stage that she had come to an accommodation, particularly with stakeholders in the business community, through the Business Advisory Forum attached to the Council of Australian Governments. It looked like we were going to get a streamlined process, but that was scuppered at the 11th hour through the influence of shadowy backroom figures, potentially of a green tinge—we do not know for sure; it was never quite made public. There is not much transparency around that process. Here was one sector in the community asking for a more transparent process, a greater streamlining of the approval process, and it was scuppered at the 11th hour.

The National Farmers' Federation has expressed deep concern about the potential for this bill to be extended to agriculture in the future—the thin end of the wedge—and it is the farmers who are picking this up, a constituency that some of the supporters of this legislation claim to speak for. But what does a peak body like the National Farmers' Federation have to say? The federation said:

Water is a critical factor for our farmers, and our strong concern is that this bill could actually have perverse negative outcomes for our agricultural sector. What may, on first glance, look like a win for farmers in the short-term could actually have long-term unintended consequences for our current, and future, farmers.

That is right. You create the trigger. You create the weapon and it can be used against you, because you have no guarantee, in a future parliament, who might do what deal that may affect agriculture or farmers.

People too caught up in the current controversy around coal seam gas do not seem to understand that you are dealing here with systemic issues around how our parliament makes laws to effect these things and the relationship between federal and state parliaments in these sorts of areas. The Australian Industry Group, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, the Clean Energy Council and the Energy Supply Association of Australia joined forces with concerns on this bill that non-evidence-based policies which are restricting the development of new energy sources may have significant negative consequences for the broader Australian community. Knee-jerk policies continue to undermine the development of energy projects within this country. This comes at a real cost and this cost is borne by the Australian community in jobs, economic growth and, ultimately, higher energy bills.

But, no, wait—we are not going to worry about the resource sector. We are not going to worry about the energy sector. We do not worry, because isn't there a pipeline out there and isn't it easy just to pick this stuff up, take it to market and sell it? We are so advantaged in this regard that we can do this without having to worry about the competition or our national competitiveness. It does not matter how much it costs to do something in Australia—we will be okay; we are insured; we are the lucky country. No, we are not. The terms of trade are falling. We have to raise our productivity. The Secretary of the Treasury, Martin Parkinson, at the last Senate estimates made the point: in the period ahead, as our terms of trade come off from the historic highs where they have been, our productivity has to almost double to potentially make up for the shortfall and the impact that will have on our living standards.

So we do not have a choice; we have to be productive and we have to be competitive. Through energy policies, already we have imposed quite big increases in energy costs across the community. That has had an impact on the cost of living. It has had an impact on the competitiveness of projects. We have to recognise that, whatever the merits of any individual piece of legislation that people in good faith may put up, it comes on top of that mountain of regulation and costs we have already—and that is the mountain that has to be tackled. So we cannot just argue about the merits of an individual piece of legislation; the challenge that serious policymakers face is how they deal with the mass of regulation as a whole. It is a cop-out to say, 'We don't have to worry about that. If those fossil fuel sectors and those resource sectors go down, we can make it up through renewables.' We are making it up through renewables, but we are having to pay a cost for that and we cannot make up 100 per cent of our energy supply through renewables, whether cost wise or in a reasonable time frame. My colleague Senator Ludlam says, 'Yes, we can.' Yes, we can, but only by immiserising growth and imposing lower living standards on Australians as a whole.

Senator Ludlam interjecting—

That has not been made up. That is backed up by all sorts of rigorous studies across the country. Senator Ludlam, you should read more widely than Green Left Weekly.

What I will say is that you have, out of their own mouths, this recognition of the costs—because, at the end of the day, the Greens do not believe that the GDP numbers reflect the actual resource base of the country or our happiness or anything else, so they are quite happy to see GDP going down. My point is this: in a rational society, where you have to sell these policies, in the suburbs, in the outer parts of the country, in regional and rural Australia, where people have to think about the costs and benefits of these things, they know that too many costs that impede great trading industries come at the expense of all of us. That is why we have rigorous processes like regulatory impact assessments to look at the costs and benefits of doing all of this.

The Queensland state government has some strong views through its Department of Natural Resources and Mines and the Coal Seam Gas Engagement and Compliance Plan 2013, a key part of their overall strategy for the responsible oversight and regulation of the coal seam gas industry. According to that document:

The Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM) is fully committed to the sustainable use of Queensland's natural resources …

The Queensland government demands an already high level of compliance obligations which it always evaluates and improves upon. The federal Labor government through these measures is making it difficult for the Queensland government to boost the state's economy and to keep it strong. The federal government is overriding the state's sovereign rights for its own political agenda.

The issue here goes to something else. If we want to convince the states to do better, then just taking it out of their hands and riding roughshod over them by having a further process is essentially just saying that you cannot trust sovereign government. My view is this: a sovereign government, if it is subject to popular and democratic election, will face the sanctions of the people. The same people in New South Wales who vote for a federal government vote for the state government. What this legislation says fundamentally is that other tiers of government cannot be trusted. As I said before, I think the real basis of this legislation is a view that if you have the numbers and you can do it, why not do it, why not respond to a perceived political demand to do so, and let principle go out the window.

The ALP, the Labor Party, the Labor government have made very sympathetic noises to business and industry when it comes to cutting green tape but have failed at every measure when challenged to put it into practice. Six months ago Tony Burke, the minister for environment, rejected an amendment to regulate coal seam gas, claiming the Commonwealth had no constitutional powers to make such laws. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, after a COAG meeting in April 2012, said: 'Look, what we want to work towards here is a streamlined system so that projects don't go through two layers of assessment for no real gain.' That was the view after the COAG meeting. Then in November 2012, Tony Burke, in a press release entitled 'Environmental standards a priority for the federal government', said:

This is about lifting the States up to the level of environmental protection provided by the Commonwealth, not letting Commonwealth standards drop. We can keep stringent environmental standards while simplifying an overly complex process—and we are.

Tony Burke introduced an expert panel on coal seam gas in 2012 to address the concerns the community had with coal seam gas operations, which the coalition supported. This bill simply adds further regulation on top of that. It goes against all the rhetoric of the government about streamlining process. Even the independent review by Allan Hawke, commissioned by this Labor government, considered the use of a water trigger under the EPBC Act previously and ruled it out, concluding that:

… including water extraction or use as a matter of NES under the Act is not the best mechanism for effectively managing water resources.

There used to be a time, particularly when Mr Rudd was the Leader of the Opposition in the run-up to the 2007 election and he would have said or done anything to be elected, when he promised to bring in a new era of evidence based policy making. Here you have Allan Hawke, an experienced public servant, who has worked with both sides of politics, who has run major departments like Defence, who understands public policy and the processes of public policy, who is saying that 'including water extraction or use as a matter of national environmental significance under the EPBC Act is not the best mechanism for effectively managing water resources'. This is evidence based policy making. We pay these experts high consultancy fees, which they are worth because they are all brainy, experienced people, and then, of course, when it suits us, we systematically ignore their advice. It is called politics overriding policy.

My experience, over a long period of time, is ultimately that good policy does trump bad politics, because, at the end of the day, the public will always respect an outcome which has been achieved as a result of a process. One of the reasons this government is in so much trouble today and faces the existential dilemmas around its leadership is that, on the way through, it has systematically trashed policy and processes. It will say or do anything to get a vote. Today it is your friend, tomorrow you are the enemy, as convenient. One day it is friends with Andrew Wilkie, the next day it is friends with Peter Slipper. That is not a way to do policy. The coalition do not support what Mr Windsor has proposed. (Time expired)

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was interesting to see Senator Lines being sworn in this morning. I wonder how long it will take before she realises things are not always what they seem in this place. When I arrived here a number of months ago, I believed far more than I do now that, as Senator Sinodinos says, good policy will always trump bad politics. But it appears once again that here we have another example of politics trumping policy. Having had an involvement in the hearings relating to this bill, I am really concerned that there is more a political agenda than any real objective. If there were any real objectives, you would have to ask why we are only applying this to coal seam gas and related coal mining. One would have thought that a water trigger under the EPBC Act should apply to anything.

Let us have a look at the other eight elements that are included under the EPBC Act as triggers at the moment. They include world heritage sites, which is a pretty broad thing; national heritage sites, which is equally broad; wetlands of international importance, which is broad; national threatened species and ecological communities, which is broad; migratory species, a very broad area of responsibility; Commonwealth marine parks, which is growing as the current legislation continues, with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park recognised as a massively important world heritage area; and nuclear actions. How can we add to that this tiny little specific area of a water trigger as it relates to coal seam gas or coal mining. It strikes me as a very strange thing. Those of us who are becoming more cynical as time goes by would suggest that it is for political purposes. I am not sure this bill is really going to achieve a great deal. The reality is that this is just another layer of regulatory burden.

Six months ago Minister Burke rejected an amendment to regulate coal seam gas mining, claiming that the Commonwealth had no constitutional powers to make such laws. But then in April last year, at a COAG meeting, the Prime Minister said 'what we want to work towards is a streamlined system so that projects do not go through two layers of assessment for no real gain'. The Prime Minister really does need to explain how on earth with an additional trigger in relation to water at a federal level—in addition to all the triggers that get put into place at a state level, plus all the other triggers that apply to this that are not necessarily water specific—this bill is not adding another layer of burden. She said: 'The classic examples that are brought by business are where people have gone through sequential assessments. So it is double time. Things that have been required for the first assessments are required in a slightly modified form for the second assessment. So they do not even get the benefit of just uplifting the work and re-presenting it; it has got to be redone.'

I am absolutely astounded that we have this bill in the House, supported by the government, which is completely contrary to the Prime Minister's words only 12 months ago. She said: 'Clearly it is an efficient system. Having said that, obviously Australians want environmental protection and I do not think there is anybody in this place that does not want to see our environment protected and kept in a sustainable state into the future.' But that is not to say that we have to go crazy about overly burdensome regulations and requirements if they do not really have any great benefit and they are being picked up by other processes along the way.

The big issue here is that what the government says and what the government does are two completely different things. There are so many examples I can think of where the government says one thing but what it does and the policies it puts in place are completely contradictory. I come from the country. I am from a farming background and I am very keen to help the farming sector through some very tough times at the moment. Over the last few months, we have heard constantly about the opportunities in the Asian century white paper. We have talked about the National Food Plan. We have also talked about the fact that this country wants to see Australia as the food bowl of the world. But if you look at the actions of this government in relation to supporting this project and this sort of rhetoric, they are going in completely the opposite direction.

We have seen so much money cut out of agricultural research and development, at both a state and a federal level. We have seen increased burdens on our farmers to comply. You only have to look at the amount of money our growers and exporters are now expected to pay to get export licences and the fees they are charged through AQIS to get their products overseas—it is almost a wonder why anybody bothers to export from Australia at the moment, given the burdens that are put in place.

We were promised, when the whole concept of cost recovery was put to this parliament—despite the fact that we did not support it; we got it—that there would be a heap of cost-saving measures added in. Needless to say, we did not see any of those cost-saving measures. Now we find, once again, that the poor old primary producer has to bear the burden of these increased costs, without having any benefit of the cost-saving measures that were promised. You talk the talk but don't walk the walk. It is this which is causing a whole heap of damage to Australia.

The APVMA bill that was recently put through this place tried to say that it would streamline things for Australian producers. You cannot streamline something and make it less of a burden on producers when you are increasing the cost and going for full cost recovery. You just end up with a situation where what the government says and what it does are two completely different things. Everyone is getting a tiny bit scared about the sovereign risk associated with all this.

What of the cost of this bill? During estimates, when Senator Birmingham was questioning the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, it was noted that the EPBC Act requires $32 million a year and 210 staff to operate the department. It admitted that changes to the existing EPBC Act, to add a new environmental test, which is to be given effect under this bill, will cost $38.5 million over the forward estimates, with ongoing costs of $10 million a year. At the same time, the changes will require an additional 43 staff this year, rising in coming years to 50.

How on earth can we be trying to reduce the burden on our community, on our producers—on the people who are actually productive out there in Australia—when we are making changes to bills that increase the burden and increase the amount of debt we have to deal with? How on earth can this bill achieve anything for Australia, given the extraordinary cost it is to government and industry at large, when we have not even got to what the implications will be for the mining industry?

The coalition recognises that communities have concerns about coal seam gas mining. Everybody has concerns about things they do not fully understand. I live on the river. We have just been through the most extraordinary process with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. I for one, as an irrigator and a licence holder, understand the importance of water and do not for one minute take away the importance of water—the very sustainability of this country. We are not saying that water and the impact on ongoing water resources is not extremely important. We also recognise the importance of farming. We are the party that supports farmers. We are the party that supports country people.

I have been particularly distressed since being here that the current government does not seem to understand what it is the farming communities of this country need in order to become productive. I live in an area where you see people pulling out orange trees and burning them, simply because they do not have the support out there to make a profit. This is very distressing. But I can assure you that I, as a member of the coalition, entirely understand the importance of farming in Australia. The coalition also understands the importance of being productive. Any of us who have run out own business understand that if you are not productive you do not go on for terribly long. As a country, we need to remain productive. These sorts of bills and the introduction of an additional layer of burden to our communities are making us less productive not only in Australia but also on the world stage. We have seen some extraordinary situations happen over recent times due to Australia not being competitive.

South Australia, the state that I represent in this place, had the terrible announcement in September last year that BHP Billiton were not intending to continue with their mining expansion at the Roxby Downs site. For South Australia that was a major, major body blow. What has been most distressing is that underlying that decision by BHP Billiton was the fact that they were not able to afford to continue to mine that particular site because of the compliance costs, the regulatory costs and the burdens that were placed on them by government. We should take away some of these burdens—and the mining tax jumps to mind as the obvious one—and most of the mining industry would breathe a great sight of relief if we no longer had it. The fact is that the sorts of bills, like the one we are today talking about, are just more burdens on miners and on the sovereign risk that we present in constantly changing the rules halfway through the process.

During the hearings we heard from a number of people. We heard from people that, obviously, were very concerned about the impacts on the water from mining projects. We also heard from those that had very big commercial interests in the operation of these mines. We should not shy away from the fact that companies like BHP Billiton, like Santos, and companies like the Queensland coal and gas company are really important contributors to the Australian economy. We cannot move away from the fact that Australia needs these guys because they are a very important part of our economic base. I think these guys are intent on ensuring that they protect the environment, because the last thing they want to do is to be shut down. There comes a time when a balance has to be achieved and acknowledgement that we cannot all be on one side or the other.

In relation to the committee's inquiry, I just referred to BHP Billiton's evidence as an example. They expressed, quite upfront and quite loudly, their support for robust environmental regulation, and the importance of minimising duplication, cost and complexity in that regulation was something that they were calling for. They had concerns about the technical drafting issues that may result from unintended consequences of these bills on the existing operations, impacts on the bilateral approval processes with states and the general uncertainty around the impacts on the timelines and requirements for approvals.

As Senator Sinodinos quite rightly pointed out, strongly and regularly, during his statement to the house: where is the Regulatory Impact Statement? You would think it would be reasonable for a Regulatory Impact Statement to be undertaken when introducing such a piece of legislation as this so that we could ensure that the concerns of everybody are considered as part of this process. It seems to me that the consideration of a very one sided situation is occurring here and that we are not actually taking into account the things that the mining industry—a very important part of our economic base—have put forward. They seem to have been totally disregarded as if there was no importance in them at all. The fact that we have no Regulatory Impact Statement, I think, is an absolute travesty of justice in this situation.

BHP Billiton also expressed concern about the potential impact on existing projects. I think this is a key point in the sense of legislation that may be passed which will affect things that are likely to happen in the future. Of course, any business that is in possession of all the facts will make a decision as to whether they choose to proceed or not to proceed. It makes it very, very difficult for those companies or those projects that are part way through and have been commenced. This particular bill is still likely to impact on them. BHP Billiton expressed a direct concern for current projects when they said:

These will be subject to increased regulatory assessment additional to assessment activities already in place. This includes referral of all water related impacts of new projects to the Independent Expert Scientific Committee for advice. This duplicates existing state assessment processes and further complicates and extends the assessment of major projects.

It seems completely unreasonable to apply what is, in essence, a retrospective legislative requirement on things that are already occurring. Once again, had we had a regulatory impact statement on the proposed changes, this would have ensured that these concerns were taken into account and dealt with. That way, the concerns raised by a number of miners during the inquiry process may have been alleviated, instead of us causing more angst, more concern and more risk and increasing the likelihood of mining projects in this country not proceeding.

This whole idea that it is okay to make changes on the run is wrong—that it is okay to give organisations and businesses one set of rules and objectives, tell them these are the ground rules under which they must operate and then turn around and change them. We do not have to look terribly far to see some of the most horrific consequences of knee-jerk changes to regulation or public policy on an existing operation. Let us just look at the northern part of Australia and see what they have done to our cattle producers there. If ever there were a most disgusting and irresponsible policy change in Australia, it has to be that. In the process of purporting to be dealing with an issue in relation to the treatment of animals, I do not think too many people from the government have been up and had a look at the consequences of thousands and thousands and thousands of cattle starving to death because producers were not able to get them out of the country and there was not sufficient feed for them to be fed. Nobody likes to see any animal hurt—I am the world's greatest softy when it comes to animals—but, when we see hundreds of thousands of cattle dying from starvation because of a policy decision that completely destroyed an industry, the government really does need to be held to account for the consequences.

Once again, we have a great big boat in South Australia tied up to a wharf—a great big boat that legitimately bought a number of licences to go fishing in South Australian waters. They bought these fishing licences off genuine people who had legitimate licenses and they were not going to take one more fish out of the South Australian fishery than would otherwise have potentially been taken by those who owned the licences. But, because of a knee-jerk reaction, once again we had a policy change part way through a company's project. It is just not fair. You cannot possibly expect a company to make a sensible decision when the facts before them at the time they make the decision are likely to be changed at the drop of a hat. It is just not right and it must not happen. Likewise, with this particular bill, the regulatory burden will impact on projects that are already underway. Businesses cannot possibly be expected to make decisions under those conditions.

Finally, the sovereign rights of the states here are another matter that really does need to be considered. To me, this smacks of, 'The states can't be trusted.' It seems we are playing Big Brother on all this in saying to them, 'I'm terribly sorry, a few people have complained about the way you're handling the administration of these projects. So, because you can't be trusted to handle them, we'll just come in over the top of you. We'll decide because we know best.' The question in that is: where on earth does this issue end if we think that, every time somebody does not like the way a state, which has a sovereign right to operate in this jurisdiction, handles something, we can just hand the powers on to the Commonwealth and fix the problem that way?

The coalition does not oppose this bill. We acknowledge the community concerns about water resources. However, we do have very, very big concerns about the regulatory burden the bill will place on our communities. (Time expired)

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure my colleague Senator Ryan is eager to make a contribution in a very short time and I am very much looking forward to his contribution. I rise to make a contribution on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment Bill 2013. As previous speakers have indicated, the coalition does not oppose this bill, but I do want to place on record a couple of concerns I have, particularly from a Western Australian perspective.

The bill seeks to amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, commonly referred to as the EPBC Act, by adding a ninth matter of national environmental significance. At present, under the terms of the EPBC Act, the minister has responsibility to make assessments relating to World Heritage sites, national heritage sites, wetlands of international importance, nationally threatened species, migratory species, Commonwealth marine parks, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and nuclear actions. The amendments proposed by this bill would put in place environmental impact assessment processes for actions involving coal seam gas or large coalmining developments that are likely to have a significant impact on water resources. You might think that is a noble goal, but that is not necessarily the case. My fear, and it is shared by my coalition colleagues, is that what we have with this legislation is yet another example of this government wanting to be seen to act on community concerns but not adequately thinking through whether this is, in fact, the best way to proceed. In other words, what we have here yet again is legislation that is being driven by politics and not policy.

Of course, there are legitimate community concerns about coal seam gas projects, and we all share a desire to ensure that our water quality is maintained. That is why the coalition is not opposing this bill. However, it is somewhat curious that we now find ourselves in this place discussing putting a water trigger in the EPBC Act, because it was not all that long ago—just a few months ago, in fact—when the Gillard government ridiculed the idea that a water trigger was needed in the EPBC Act. So, we have to ask ourselves: what has changed in so little space of time?

Call us cynics, but we in the coalition are suspect of any of the government's actions in this regard. The coalition suspects it might have something to do with the fact that the member for New England, Mr Windsor, marched into the Prime Minister's office and demanded this be done rather than put this idea through a rigorous process of proper policy assessment. He walked into the Prime Minister's office not doing what most Australians would request him to do and seeking her resignation; instead, he went into her office and requested a deal for himself. In the blink of an eye, the Gillard government completely reversed course and rushed legislation into this parliament to satisfy the demands of one MP whose support it relies on for its very survival. All at once, what was deemed unnecessary just weeks earlier was suddenly considered to be urgent. Think about it: none of the science or evidence changed in those few weeks. Community concern did not appear overnight. It was there when Labor pilloried this proposal, just as it is today. Does anyone think for a moment that the Prime Minister, the minister and the entire cabinet suddenly changed their whole thinking on the matter and were suddenly convinced by new and compelling evidence? Of course not. What happened was that the member for New England threatened this government's grip on office. All he had to do was make his demand and the Gillard government jumped: 'Yes, Tony. How high, Tony? Three bags full, Tony.' Simon Says has become Tony Says. It is no way to make public policy; it is no way to govern a country like ours.

When you take such a slipshod approach to your legislative agenda, it stands to reason that you will produce legislation that is less than ideal, which is what we have been presented with in this particular case. One of the many concerns with this legislation is that it creates many areas of duplication with existing state laws. I know this is a particular concern to the state government in Western Australia. Indeed, the Minister for Mines and Petroleum, the Hon. Bill Marmion, wrote to me just last week to express the government's concerns in Western Australia in relation to this specific bill. Western Australia is not commercially viable when it comes to coal seam gas, which is primarily what this bill is aimed at. Yet this bill will impose a layer of additional regulation. The WA state government finds this somewhat galling given the state has already established a strong regulatory framework for commercial gas extraction from deep shale and tight rock formations, especially where fracking is involved. Moreover, WA already has the strongest chemical disclosure requirements of any Australian jurisdiction, rigorous environmental and safety approval processes and international standards for the design and integrity of wells.

Yet the Gillard government takes no account of these things. We know this government is not big on states' rights. It looks to further centralise power at every turn and has a dismissive attitude to the very real concerns of Western Australians with regard to dwindling GST payments—but that is for another time. Yet the fact remains that under the terms of the Australian Constitution it is the states that are responsible for regulating land use, including the exploration of minerals and resources on that land. They are—and are well accepted to be—state resources. That is something with which the Rudd and Gillard governments have never been comfortable, which is why we have seen the imposition of a mining tax and the accompanying rhetoric about sharing wealth amongst the states and the like. Of course, it is not entirely inappropriate for the federal government to take some role in environmental protection; that is not in dispute. But I think there is legitimate concern about the manner in which the amendments to this legislation have been handled.

As a result of Labor's rush to comply with Mr Windsor's wishes, we are witnessing the imposition of a one-size-fits-all approach. As others have already noted, all the concerns being expressed about the problem that this legislation seeks to address seems to be coming from one particular state. Perhaps it is for that jurisdiction to examine whether its own laws are operating effectively and whether a state based solution is not more appropriate. The danger in doing this at the federal level is that these new requirements will impact on projects across the board. The impact will be felt as greatly in Western Australia, where there is minimal community concern about coalseam gas, as it will in those jurisdictions where community concerns are much greater.

This brings me to my other key concern: that we are now introducing elements to the EPBC that target a particular sector or industry. The intention of the EPBC is to consider matters of broad national environmental significance, irrespective of which industry is proposing a development. However, with this amendment, we are beginning the process of singling out coalseam gas and coalmining. I do worry about the significant precedent that this sets. If this is done now in relation to the coal sector, what is to stop a future government targeting other groups by applying additional EPBC triggers to their activities? I am thinking particularly of the agricultural sector. I know this is a matter of great concern to many farmers and farming groups across my home state in WA.

I would also add my voice to the concerns expressed by my colleague Senator Birmingham about the fact that this legislation is retrospective. We generally take the view that retrospective legislation makes for bad policy outcomes. This is especially so when we are dealing with the development of projects that create jobs for Australians but require significant private investment. What kind of signal are we sending when we change the rules for environmental approvals for those who have already started the costly and time-consuming process of applying and telling them that they have to start all over again? What will that do to investor confidence? What will that do to job creation in Australia? Should this legislation pass, it should apply only to applications that commence after this bill becomes law, not to applications already in progress.

As I indicated at the outset, the coalition does not oppose this legislation, but we do maintain significant concerns, and we think there is a better way forward than simply legislating as a knee-jerk reaction to political imperatives. That is why we are proposing a simplified one stop shop for environmental approvals and proposing to vastly reduce the levels of green tape that act as a barrier to investment and job creation. We believe we can have a simpler, more rapid process in place for environmental approvals. It is actually possible to do this just as rigorously and just as efficiently by cutting back on the duplication that exists in the current system while at the same time maintaining high levels of environmental protection. Should the coalition be fortunate enough to govern after 14 September we will work with states to put in place an approvals regime that does not needlessly delay projects and prevent the investment and job creation that our country so badly needs after the years and years of this government's mismanagement.

To end, I quote from the letter that the Minister for Mines and Petroleum in Western Australia sent to me only a week ago. He said: 'Given Western Australia's robust regulatory regime and its independent environmental protection authority, the state does not agree that this bill in any form, and the extra layer of regulatory duplication that would result, would be of benefit to West Australians.'

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this particular bill, but, as happens on many occasions, I start by wondering why there seems to be an assumption by some that all wisdom resides in this place, this parliament or this city. Yet again, there is a bill before us that seeks to override what communities decide through other elections to state parliament. There is a bill here that assumes that somehow decisions made in this place are holier, wiser or delivered with greater insight than decisions made by elected representatives at the state level.

The truth is, as my colleague Senator Smith outlined earlier, this bill does not have anything to do with the environment. This bill has nothing to do with an established environmental need. It has everything to do with an established political need. The government's own behaviour on this demonstrates that. This is a bill that seeks to deliver the member for New England a bumper sticker, a political win. It does not deliver or ensure that there will be any greater environmental protection, because no-one has convinced me or established that decisions made by Commonwealth bureaucrats and politicians are somehow wiser, better or more well informed. There is no proof, nor has there ever been an example, of where the 226 members of this place can ensure that the outcome will always be better.

We need to go back to what the real driving force of this bill is. It was about a political dilemma that this Labor government faced. In fact, this bill symbolises what has been so wrong about the government that was drawn from this 43rd Parliament. Promises and commitments made one day, or statements, policies and frameworks announced one week are all overturned days, weeks or even hours later because a political need somehow overrides any word given or any consideration or consultation undertaken regarding important issues like this. We saw it most pointedly of all with the carbon tax. 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead' are words that will be taught to Australian political science students, I would imagine, for decades, along with the press conference with the then leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, and the announcement of there suddenly being a carbon tax explicitly provided for by virtue of the Prime Minister's political need to stay in the Lodge and the need for Labor to retain the reins of power. In this particular case, we have seen statements, policies and announcements of the government overturned weeks after they were made in order to please the political interests of the member for New England.

The EPBC Act is actually a very important act, and I say it should not be dealt with in such a cavalier fashion because there are national environmental interests. There are some international obligations which the Australian community expects. But, in this particular instance, the concern the coalition has is that we are adding a new industry-specific sector to be EPBC Act and that it is being done without due consideration. I am yet to be convinced that somehow duplicating the assessments undertaken by state governments will necessarily result in better ones.

One of my colleagues, Senator Ruston, earlier referred to the Olympic Dam project. The Olympic Dam project is an important example of what can happen when the costs and compliance regime around major resource projects are taken too far. I am not a South Australian, but that was an important project and remains so for South Australians. If that project had been commenced a couple of years earlier when prices were higher, when the economy was stronger, or even a couple of years before that, and if the regime had not strung out the approval process so long, then that project would have commenced. Once resource projects commence, then they have a habit of continuing because of the sunken costs that are inherent in such projects. The loss to Australia and the loss to South Australia from Olympic Dam being deferred is one of substantial economic activity that might otherwise have been undertaken if it were commenced earlier. We need to take into account that regulatory costs are delaying these decisions to the point where the costs become so great it is not worth it—it does not often happen, but occasionally does—or are delaying a decision so long that circumstances change, meaning that people will not undertake those particular projects.

I put to you that the South Australian and Australian economies would be stronger today if Olympic Dam had been going ahead. That is one of the reasons. The costs of regulation and compliance are reasons the coalition has a promise of a one-stop-shop for environmental approvals, where the states can be the authorising agents for standards set by the Commonwealth. There is no point making people go through multiple layers of compliance and regulation if we are all trying to achieve similar outcomes. It merely adds to costs and it merely slows down projects.

Senator Smith highlighted earlier one of the risks of this, which was to add an industry-specific nature to the EPBC Act. I think that Senator Smith has highlighted a particularly important point, because it is a real risk to add an industry-specific aspect to the EPBC Act. But I do not think it is something we should flippantly ignore, either. The reason is that there are some in this parliament who would like to use the EPBC Act to restrict economic development. I will use an example of the behaviour of the Greens with respect to the Future Fund. Over time, we have witnessed The Greens questioning the Future Fund. It started off with antipersonnel weapons, which they would like banned from Future Fund investment. Then they moved down to tobacco, saying that we should ban the Future Fund from investing in tobacco. And over a year ago I wrote an article predicting the Greens would head the same way on coal, because this establishes the precedent where they can use regulation and public funds to achieve the objective they cannot achieve through the ballot box. They want to use the bullying power of the state, of bureaucrats, of regulations and of state owned funds to achieve particular objectives for which they cannot generate democratic political support. So, what have we seen over the last few weeks? We have seen the Greens come out and say the Future Fund should not be actually investing in coal, because of the threat it poses.

That is only the first step. I say to the people of Australia and to those who care about the EPBC Act that this will open a door for the Greens and people who have that mindset to actually start inserting further industry-specific aspects into the EPBC. It will open the door to them. In fact they are probably excited by the prospect. If people actually consider the EPBC Act to be important, as I think most Australians do, they will not want it to become the political plaything of extremists seeking to implement a particular economic and social model that they cannot generate support for through the ballot box. They are trying to do it through the back door through regulations or through getting the Future Fund in and out of certain industries. That is what the Greens are about.

This bill poses a risk in simply watering down the commitment that most people would have to the EPBC Act, but also in increasing compliance costs. There has been no established need for this particular change. It is inconsistent with the coalition's policy to actually reduce the burdens and the costs of complying with environmental regulation. Some, mistakenly, or somehow maliciously, may try to equate that with reducing environmental standards. But only someone who did not care about the environment would actually say that reducing the cost of compliance was a bad thing, because reducing the cost of compliance will actually generate greater public support.

The coalition has committed to working with the states to streamline our environmental approval process. We are committed to that. We do not think this particular bill fits with that policy, but we will not oppose it, even though we do point out that we think it has more to do with a political objective than an environmental one.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to add to comments on this legislation. Senator Waters has carried this debate for the Australian Greens, as this is an area of great interest and expertise for her. So I am going to confine my responses to those that directly impact on Western Australia.

This is one good example of how crossbench collaboration can bring an unwilling government to the table for a result that acts in the public interest and improves environmental protection. I acknowledge Mr Windsor for bringing it forward in the other place and for negotiating with the Greens on the proposal that these powers remain with the Commonwealth government. The right place for them is Commonwealth environmental legislation, specifically the EPBC Act, rather than deferring and delegating these powers away to state governments that have shown themselves hopelessly captive to the very fossil-fuel industries they would seek to regulate.

Within those broad parameters, I will speak briefly about a serious loophole, and I do not for a moment believe that this has been introduced into the bill intentionally. I think it is a genuine mistake, and results much more from geology than from politic. But now it is upon us to remedy that problem. Shale and tight gas are different forms of unconventional gas from coal seam gas. They are just as damaging to the water and the environment as the types that this bill is dealing with today and they require the same highly damaging and risky extractive techniques of hydraulic fracking, including the use of injected chemicals to get these materials out of the ground.

Western Australia has the fifth largest reserve of shale gas in the world. The way that this amendment we are debating is drafted excludes shale gas from consideration and deals with coal seam gas only. Simply because unconventional gas resources onshore come from different forms of geological strata in different formations should not mean that a third of the Australian continent should be free from this kind of protection measure. If the Australian government believes that this amendment is worth passing, that Commonwealth environmental law will be improved. With the inclusion of a water trigger for coal seam gas, there is then no reason at all why you would not extend its ambit to include shale gas and other forms of unconventional onshore gas, which Western Australia has a large and extremely unfortunate endowment.

The WA Department of Mines and Petroleum—with WA holding the fifth largest reserve of shale gas in the world, these things are always somewhat uncertain, given that the resources are underground and not necessarily very easy to prove up—expresses huge enthusiasm for unconventional gas mining. The Western Australian government's so-called Strategic Energy Initiative was neither strategic nor showed any particular initiative. It rests for Western Australia's domestic electricity supply—as we are busy shipping our North-West Shelf LNG trade to the lowest bidder and exporting it as rapidly as we can get it out of the ground. The WA Strategic Energy Initiative proposes that Western Australia should become almost entirely dependent for our electricity generation on a mix of coal and unconventional gas. This is an area of enormous interest for Western Australians. The WA government has no plans in place for renewable energy to take up any substantial fraction of the electricity mix in WA. Instead, it proposes that unconventional onshore gas should take up the slack, which presupposes a drilling campaign across particular geological regions of WA—unprecedented in Western Australian history.

The Western Australian government has had no due diligence for ensuring that unconventional gas mining—shale and tight gas fracking—do not cause unacceptable damage to the WA environment and public health. There have been no environmental assessments or attempts to consider landscape-scale impacts, which would have been the appropriate level of assessment for an industry of this type. In WA, which is a couple of years behind, we are seeing the extraordinary confrontations that were seen in New South Wales and Queensland and which brought this legislation to the foreground. WA is proposing to repeat exactly those mistakes. If we get there through the kind of head-long rush to support the gas industry and its ambitions we will find that this amendment, which proposes a water trigger to the EPBC, will not protect Western Australian landholders, Aboriginal stakeholders or advocates for the environment. It will not protect those issues, because of a loophole in the bill which effectively draws the geological definition of unconventional gas too tightly and constraining it to coal seam gas.

In WA there has been very little attempt to engage local communities in a discussion about whether they want a tight gas and shale gas industry for their state. In the mid-west there was community consultation that consisted of little more than government sponsored industry circuses for the gas industry, and the Kimberley has seen, if anything, less consultation. There are an estimated 297 or 300 trillion cubic feet, TCF, of shale and tight gas in WA. It is an extraordinary resource and it dwarfs some of the reserves on the East Coast. If a new shale gas industry goes ahead on the scale imagined in WA, the costs of mitigating the carbon pollution will be borne elsewhere in the economy. The CSIRO recently released a report that confirmed what many of us have been saying for years: the long-term impacts of chemicals used in and released by fracking are unknown and risky. This is in the driest continent on the planet and the western third of that continent would be unprotected by the measure that we are debating here today.

The Greens opposed the Barnett government's reckless promotion of the fledgling shale and tight gas industry. We call on the Commonwealth government—and I hope we will get government support for this amendment when we put it in the committee stage—to recognise shale gas in this bill. I will not address that in too much detail now, but we do have an amendment to that effect. If we believe that landholders on the East Coast should be protected from the violations of groundwater and environmental integrity and agricultural productivity posed by this industry, then I would like to know why Western Australians should not be similarly protected.

The department, as I said, estimates that about 10 per cent of Western Australia is prospective for shale gas. We have three major basins that are either known or highly prospective to contain unconventional gas. The Canning Superbasin, which underlies a large part of the Kimberley, is estimated to hold at least 200 TCF of that gas. If you want to compare that with some of the known reservoirs on the East Coast, you will get an understanding of the magnitude of the resource, if you want to call it that, in WA. The Perth Basin, which lies along the coastline from Busselton to Carnarvon and beyond, is the most advanced in terms of proving the resource up and moving it towards production.

With the onshore Carnarvon Basin, which lies between Shark Bay and Exmouth and inland, and the Officer Basin in which exploration is only fairly recent, WA is highly prospective. Right now we are expecting the next three fracking wells to take place in the north of the Perth Basin, near Eneabba. In the Canning Basin—that colossal reserve—BURU is confident that its discoveries in the Valhalla-Paradise region will be backed up with more gas shows out of the Laurel Formation. So there is a lot of activity at the moment. We have not seen the pitched battles and lock-the-gate campaigns that we have seen on the East Coast. Some of these sites are very remote and they are more a concern to Aboriginal landholders than, for example, pastoralists or settled agriculture and irrigated agriculture, as we see on the East Coast, but it does not make this technology any less damaging. The onshore Carnarvon Basin is still in the very early stages of exploration but, given the success of the offshore gas field, we would not be surprised to see petroleum onshore as well.

So we have an extraordinary land rush and scramble to Western Australia. We are extremely concerned about water use, because fracking is a process that uses a lot of water that will have to be sourced locally in WA. The US EPA estimates that about 19 million litres is required to drill and frack a well. Where is that proposed to come from in WA The WA minister for mining estimates that roughly 300 wells are needed to drain a small gas field. That is 5.7 gigalitres of water. Given the location of the known fields in and around Eneabba and throughout the mid-west and the competition for that water that already exists with mid-west mining companies, we need to seriously consider the licensing and extraction of this much water for the purposes of gas fracking.

A huge part of the controversy over this industry has centred on the chemicals that are used to try and open up the fractures in the geology to release the gas. The chemicals are used for engineering reasons and, for the most part, they are treated as commercial-in-confidence. The idea that in this country, as they have done in the United States, we would let the fossil fuel industry inject poisonous chemicals into groundwater reserves—and they will not even tell the public which chemicals they are because it might breach some commercial-in-confidence considerations—just shows you how far gone this industry really is.

To frack a single well can take as much as 19 million litres of fluid. A megalitre is a cubic metre of fluid. Nineteen million litres of fluid to crack a single well. That works out between 85,000 and 380,000 litres of unknown chemicals, poisonous chemicals, per well. The public do not know what the chemicals are and the department will not tell us. I suspect that is the sort of thing that, as has happened in the United States, eventually comes out by way of leaks and whistleblowing, putting the industry on the defensive. Why not simply disclose it at the outset, particularly if we are being told that these chemicals are entirely harmless?

In response to public pressure, industry is starting to put out a little bit of information regarding these chemicals online, and they say, 'Household chemicals, walnut husks, wells that emit nothing but butterflies—there's no danger at all'. Now, I say thousands of litres of household chemicals are not nothing at all—that these are things we should be extremely concerned about. There is a reason that these things have little skulls and crossbones on the labels and that we do not let kids anywhere near them. So, the information that the industry has released so far is entirely inadequate.

Apart from contamination through these unknown chemical additives in the thousands and hundreds of thousands of tonnes, there is also a huge concern about methane in groundwater. Methane is the cause of the flaming tap water that people would have seen in some of the advocacy videos and materials coming from the United States. Water that ignites—what a wonderful idea! Methane is not considered a contaminant in and of itself. It is, however, entirely flammable and is a potent greenhouse gas. The US EPA has just come down with some new rules around well completions that mean new completions must not vent or flare but must trap and sequester the gas produced in testing. We do not have anything like those rules in Western Australia, because we are operating under a state government administration that could not care less about the greenhouse gas emissions. It has sucked up, without any kind of critique, the statements of the gas industry that say that because they are better than old forms of coal fired power they are therefore good for the environment. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

Shale gas exploration all along the Perth basin in WA will also have a serious impact on agricultural land. If the Commonwealth and the state government want to prevent the kinds of collisions and contests that are occurring on the Liverpool Plains and across Queensland, one thing they could do is take very good care in relation to the collision between this industry and farmers and pastoralists in WA. With each pad requiring roughly three hectares of land plus all the roading and pipeline infrastructure, we can see the sort of damage that is likely to be done. And when announcing the halving of royalty rates for the unconventional gas industry, the minister noted that approximately 10 times the number of wells would need to be drilled to extract the same amount of gas. So, what it has looked like in other jurisdictions—a well every couple of hundred metres and a spaghetti of road and pipeline connections holding it all together—could be coming soon to Western Australia. And as for the protections we legislate today—because of the good work of the crossbenchers in the other place and here in the Senate—WA will be left out.

There are risks associated with hydraulic fracking. France, Bulgaria, various townships in the United States and other jurisdictions have voted to ban this technique. The state of Vermont in the United States signed its fracking ban into law. These countries and other jurisdictions are seeing that the safest way for them to manage the environmental and health issues associated with fracking is to not do it at all. It is already occurring in WA without any environmental impact assessment and with no regulatory oversight by the government's environmental agencies, either the EPA or the Department of Environment and Conservation. This activity is regulated entirely under the petroleum act administered by the Department of Mines and Petroleum, which is the No. 1 promoter of the industry. So, it is not even that we have a captive regulator; we have no regulator at all. The Auditor-General has found that the DMP has been critically deficient in its compliance monitoring and its enforcement activities for environmental conditions across the whole suite of extractive activities that it regulates. That is why it is so important that the Greens were able to negotiate that these powers, such as they are, remain with the Commonwealth, because the WA authorities are entirely captive to—and see themselves as promotional arms of—the fossil fuel industries that they enable.

WA does not need a gas fracking industry at this time to secure energy for the future, as claimed by proponents of the industry. In fact—and the state government's strategic energy initiative shows in black and white exactly how this will operate—the insistence on squeezing the last fossil drop out of Western Australian geology when we should be by now well and truly into the age of renewables shows how pursuing an unconventional gas industry in WA and across the country can actually constrain development of renewable energy alternatives. The regulatory expertise and the interest within government—the promotional work, the workshops, the conferences—are all being brought to bear on maintaining and extending the fossil fuel incumbents and the expense of the renewable industries that we should be turning to. The state government, for example, is providing very significant subsidies to the fracking industry, including more than $100 million in unconventional gas exploration subsidies via royalties for regions. What an extraordinary waste of taxpayers' money in order to help the extractive fossil fuel industry squeeze the last drop of carbon out of the Western Australian landscape! There is a 50 per cent royalty reduction for the industry.

We have entirely untapped energy sources in WA. In Western Australia, with the help of a group of engineers and advocates known as Sustainable Energy Now, we have developed the WA Energy 2029 proposal which depicts what it would look like to get 100 per cent renewable energy. As dismissive as Senator Sinodinos was when he said that nobody has ever looked at the possibility of doing 100 per cent renewable energy in Australia, apart from his rather dismissive acknowledgement of Green Left Weekly, the Australian government's own energy market regulator has just undertaken a study that says it is possible. It is going to cost money and it is going to require political will and investment. In fact, what is going to cost us much more is to blindly plough on with business as usual.

I commend to the government the Energy 2029 proposal and I also commend it to you. When we get to the committee stage on this bill I will want to know if the government is supporting the Australian Greens' amendment that we will move to bring the entire continent into these measures. If the Liverpool Plains is worth protecting and if Queensland is worth protecting then so is the Perth Basin and so is the Fitzroy Valley. That is the job that we have been brought here to do today, to ensure that such regulations do exist to at least provide a minimum due diligence before we allow the gas industry to frack Australian water resources across the length and breadth of the continent. It should apply to all states and territories. I invite my coalition colleagues from Western Australia, and a number of them are in the chamber now, to explain whether they would support an amendment to bring Western Australia within the ambit of this legislation.

Senator Cormann interjecting—

No, Senator Cormann, I will happily take that acknowledgement. You stand condemned, Senator Cormann, for leaving Western Australia unprotected even as there is an acknowledgement, at least on this side of the chamber on the cross benches, that some protection is warranted, that some environmental oversight by the Commonwealth for protection of water resources is required. I will have to trust that Labor senators will join with the crossbenchers in passing an amendment that at least offers this minimal degree of protection for Western Australians as it does for the rest of the country.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 18 September 2010 following the last federal election the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, said:

The parliamentary reforms for the new parliament will change our political processes and the way we conduct our democracy, bringing new levels of openness and accountability into our democratic processes, with the hope that each of us in parliament can be judged on the contribution we make, not the points that we score.

Further, around that time, the Prime Minister said:

I believe Australians want greater scrutiny of their government and greater accountability to parliament.

The Prime Minister further said: 'Obviously I am a big believer in transparency, and understanding and unveiling the facts'. What a shame it is, yet again, that we see those words of Prime Minister Gillard ring so hollow around this building. We are, of course, here to consider questions associated with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment Bill, and they can be best referred to as the development of a water trigger.

It is my situation, and I am sure it is that of my colleagues in the coalition, when we definitely say that coal seam gas requires a comprehensive policy approach to address the environmental, community and economic impacts—all three. The principles underpinning the position that we take, of course, is the capacity for a measured, rational and balanced assessment of mining and its management. Time does not permit me to comment on the observations made by Senator Ludlam in his contribution a few moments ago except to say that, as a Western Australian senator, I place on record my disagreement with Senator Ludlam's pessimistic reflection on the controls in place in our state.

I believe these are the elements that need to be addressed. First of all, managed properly, coal seam gas does have the potential to revitalise parts of regional Australia and develop, at a time of increasing pessimism around the world, a new economic boon particularly in those states in the east and the north-east of this country. I acknowledge of course, as does any reasonable minded person, that, poorly managed, this could produce serious environmental and social problems, which nobody in this place wants to see. I certainly believe that there should be no coal seam gas development in areas where we know that the impact on the quality of ground water or surface water would be negative. Once again, we must ensure a circumstance in which we can predict that and prevent it. It must also be clear that it must be safe for the environment before any coal seam gas exploration or extraction could occur.

Secondly, prime agricultural land is increasingly important and we are losing it in this country at a great rate as we all know. Urban expansion and the salinisation of ground water on the land in Western Australia and in the other states certainly does focus on the need for us to preserve prime agricultural land and ensure it is not placed at harm by any sort of extractive activity such as that associated with coal seam gas, should it be that circumstance. I also remind the chamber and those who are listening that we have both a tremendous opportunity and an obligation to be able to contribute to the feeding of the ever-increasing number of people on this earth and indeed those who are not yet satiated in terms of their hunger.

Thirdly, coal seam gas should not occur close to existing residential areas. It is obviously the case. A person's home is their castle, and they should have a reasonable expectation that it should not be the subject of any deleterious activity as a result of extraction of, for example, coal seam gas. Landowners in this country are entitled to appropriate remuneration or compensation for access to their land, particularly where it interferes with their legal activities on that land, especially should it be associated with agriculture. It should not just be compensation; it should be a reward for the inconvenience suffered. And those regions that develop so much of the wealth from coal seam gas developments do expect and should receive some fair return to their communities.

Those are the principles upon which we should be examining this legislation. The bill and its objectives are to add yet another national environmental item of significance to the EPBC Act, an act which I remind you was introduced by the coalition under Prime Minister Howard and the then Minister for the Environment Senator Robert Hill. What this will do is create a new subdivision within the act, which, if passed, would require environmental impact assessments in those areas involving coal seam gas and would create civil penalties and offences for those who fail to comply with the provisions of the act.

But there are negatives, of course, and one of them goes immediately to the point of the Constitution—a matter which will be the subject of further debate in this place later this week when we come to look at questions associated with the arguments for or against a referendum to change the Constitution. It goes the fact that in this country, under the Constitution as it exists, so many of these matters are the province of the states and the territories. It is critically important that we avoid wherever possible the cost, the time and the lost energy associated with duplication. Indeed, the proposed legislation simply introduces a new layer of bureaucratic red tape which industry can ill afford. Communities do not wish to see the related confusion and it is not good for the parliamentary process. I go back to the comments with which I introduced my contribution, which were the Prime Minister's remarks associated with transparency.

We have a circumstance, then, where protection of water and water tables is already covered, firstly, by state legislation and, secondly, by the impositions of an expert panel. The opposition supported the development by the government last year of an independent expert panel to advise parliament, government and communities. So the question must be asked: why, indeed, are we now introducing a new element? It smells like a quick political fix, simply because it is only in the early part of this year that the government itself rejected many of the proposals similar to those that are now contained in this legislation, which were essentially to establish, as Senator Birmingham said in his contribution earlier, a water trigger in the EPBC Act, to be added to the range of triggers on matters of national environmental importance which exist in the act as it is now.

So we must ask the question: why are we considering it at all? Needless to say, as has been the case so often with this government and that that preceded it between 2007 and 2010, politics always takes precedence over good policy. In this particular case, of course, it was the member for New England, Mr Windsor, who came along and imposed on the government his will, at which time it did a complete change-about and has now introduced these amendments.

What have the stakeholders said in all of this? I will come back in a few moments to some of those stakeholders who were not ever in fact consulted when this amendment was first proposed. Let me demonstrate, if I can, the disappointment when, as part of this rushed and ill-considered move by the government in introducing this amendment, it completely and utterly overlooked the regulatory impact statement. The Prime Minister exempted this from a regulatory impact statement. I can only ask you: where does that fit in? In something as important as we all agree are matters associated with environmental concerns, particularly in those states of Queensland and New South Wales, which are so heavily impacted, I ask where that sits with the Prime Minister's statement on 31 August 2010, in which she said:

I believe Australians want greater scrutiny of their government and greater accountability to parliament.

You cannot just say these things as a political leader or as the Prime Minister of this country and then fail to implement them and see them through. The words are as hollow as the meaning.

In this particular case, in addressing this issue, a group that was not consulted, the Minerals Council of Australia, said that the legislation:

… shows that the Federal Government is more focused on increasing the bureaucratic constraints on the coal sector rather than creating the right regulatory environment to expand the industry; creating more jobs and national income.

They say:

The proposed changes will do nothing to enhance Australia's reputation as an investment destination. Project approval times in Australia are already well in excess of the international average and the plan put forward today will simply add to those delays for no environmental gain.

I mentioned earlier the dual role of the states in this. I go to the New South Wales Minerals Council CEO, Mr Galilee. His recommendation to the federal government was to reconsider its backward decision on this legislation, and he said:

It's extremely disappointing that in an election year the Federal Government and Tony Windsor are seeking to create the impression that the State based assessment process isn't good enough. This is completely wrong. Water is already a fundamental aspect of the assessment process for mining projects in New South Wales.

The National Farmers Federation equally expressed its concern over the possibility of the targeting of one industry, in this case the extractive industry of coal seam gas, and the prospect of it then being redirected to agriculture and what the implications might be.

The National Farmers Federation made this observation:

Water is a critical factor for our farmers and our strong concern is that this bill could actually have a perverse negative outcome for our agricultural sector. What may on first glance look like a win for farmers in the short term could actually have long-term unintended consequences for our current and future farmers.

I and many others stand up in this place and talk about the pressures on agricultural production and on agribusiness in this country at this time and it does not need the further burden of unnecessary bureaucratic red tape. The Business Council of Australia warned that the legislation would duplicate state and territory processes while adding costs and increasing uncertainty in the sector. They said that it flies in the face of what makes sense for jobs and the economy while offering no tangible benefit to the environment. How often do we have to hear this message coming through?

Let me go to the Labor government to see where they have stood on this before they wobbled and shifted. The ALP have made very sympathetic noises to business and industry. They pretended to be also concerned about the risks of investment not coming into this country and about the risks of investment leaving this country, and about jobs and regional Australia. It was only about six to nine months ago now that Minister Burke rejected an amendment to regulate coal seam gas, claiming that the Commonwealth had no constitutional powers to make such laws.

Ms Gillard, at COAG, no less, in April of last year said: 'What we want to work towards here is a streamlined system so that projects do not go through two layers of assessment for no real gain.' Those are the words of the Prime Minister. She then said:

And so the classic examples that are brought by business is where people have gone through sequential assessments, so it’s double the time, things that have been required for the first assessment are required in a slightly modified form for the second assessment ...

How true that has been with this Labor government in an unrelated area. In fact, it was Minister Burke. A circumstance in Western Australia was brought to me. It was about a tourism development in the south-west of the state. Eventually, after nine years, that development successfully went through an assessment at state level. It was required to go to federal assessment. The previous federal minister was about to sign it when Minister Burke came in as the minister. He said: 'No, no, no; I'm putting a halt to all that. I want a complete environmental reassessment.' Prime Minister Gillard knows where the problems are. She knows how to espouse the solutions. What she is unable to do is to effect them. She said, 'So clearly that is an inefficient system.' Having said that, she then said 'Australians do want to see good environmental protection and good environmental outcomes'. Of course they do; we all do. Then she went on to say:

So taking those two things—how can we best design a system that works, works in a streamlined fashion, works quickly, so people don’t have these sequential assessments, but is still rigorous enough to ensure that we meet environmental standards.

I return to Minister Burke, who on 2 November last year said:

This is about lifting the States up to the level of environmental protection provided by the Commonwealth, not letting Commonwealth standards drop. We can keep stringent environmental standards while simplifying an overly complex process—and we are.

Minister Burke, no, you are not. Therein lies the challenge.

We have seen the establishment of the independent expert scientific committee. That is the appropriate place for this. The best scientific minds should be brought to bear on the situation to examine it and then come back and advise. They should go to the community and to business and to industry—to all the stakeholders—to seek their input. They should come to parliamentarians: 'We want your views. We will now apply the rigour of good science and come up with advice and recommendations.' The coalition supported that process when it was first put into place. But at the first hurdle—the first time that the committee was asked to address itself to an issue like this—the government has simply sidelined it.

Then there was the Hawke review of the act that was initiated by the Labor government. Most of the recommendations of the Hawke review were simply put to one side and ignored or cherry picked. Those particularly applying to this area have been ignored.

We have a circumstance in which two states, Queensland and New South Wales, would appear to be the targets. The question then becomes: are the regulatory processes in those two states rigorous enough? Is it necessary for all six states and the two territories to be the subject of what many would claim is unnecessary interference, simply to give effect to this?

It is interesting that at the Senate committee that met on this and reported to the Senate the Australian Network of Environmental Defenders Offices' Ms Walmsley, said in evidence:

I think the clear example of an ideal process would be the Hawke review.

…   …   …

So, no, I do not think it is ideal that the EPBC Act is being amended by piecemeal bills. I think we should embrace the opportunity to follow the Hawke review and actually do a proper amendment of the act itself to strengthen the Commonwealth role. The problem with that is that the government response cherry-picked aspects of the Hawke review and did not support some of the more important reforms that were recommended.

So we have a circumstance in which major stakeholders were not consulted. We have a circumstance in which the scientific committee put forward for the purpose of evaluating these sort of activities has been largely ignored. We have a circumstance now in which there is expensive time-wasting duplication of state and territory processes. And should the people of Australia on 14 September accord the privilege to the coalition of governing this country beyond that date, it is certainly an area in which our leader, Mr Abbott, has said we will address this unnecessary duplication.

I go to the fact that something as apparently as important as this was exempted from a regulatory impact statement. I go to the broken promises of the government as a result of that circumstance. And of course the end result is a complete lack of confidence by the community, by the states, by business and industry, by investors and, largely, by parliamentarians in the ability of this government to even elect and undertake its own processes with regard to these amendments.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a bad piece of legislation from a bad government. If this bill is passed it will weaken our economic growth prospects while doing nothing for the environment. It will weaken our energy security, moving forward, while doing nothing for the environment. It will impose more red and green tape on an important industry for Australia, because that is what one of the key Independents and the Greens want this Labor government to do. This is not about science. This is not about good environmental policy. This is all about politics. Labor is weak, it is dysfunctional and it is deeply divided. And Labor is clearly unable to stand up for the national interest. That is why we get presented with a political fix like this, even though it is bad for Australia. It is all about hanging onto government for one more day, one more week and one more month, no matter what the consequences for the country.

The amendments in this bill will create a new subdivision of the EPBC Act that, if passed, will in effect add a ninth area of national environmental significance. It will put in place environmental impact assessment processes for actions involving coal-seam gas or large coal mining development that is likely to have a significant impact on a water resource. It will create civil penalty and offence provisions for taking an action involving coal-seam gas or large coal mining development that is likely to have an impact on a water resources, without an approval or exemption from obtaining approval. Of course, in doing so, this bill ensures that the Commonwealth will duplicate state activities. The legislation adds another layer of bureaucratic red tape, it will increase approval times and it will make Australia a less desirable place in which to invest, even though the things it is trying to do are already happening. We, the smart guys here in Canberra, know better than the government in New South Wales; we know better than the government in Queensland—that is what this arrogant, out-of-touch, increasingly desperate Gillard government, under pressure and egged on by key Independents and the Greens, is doing.

The truth is that the coal industry and the coal seam gas industry are very important industries for Australia. Coal is our largest export, providing affordable and reliable access to energy and helping to develop economies around the world. Coal seam gas has huge potential to help us ensure reliable and affordable access to an important energy supply domestically as well as develop another export industry. These industries are important for economic prosperity, jobs and our living standards. They do not deserve the outrageous treatment they are getting from this dysfunctional, divided and incompetent government.

Senator Back just pointed out that, yet again, this is a massive regulatory change which did not go through a regulatory impact assessment process. Supposedly, under this government we were given the assurance that there would be a proper cost-benefit analysis. Whenever there was to be regulatory change, through the independent Office of Best Practice Regulation there was going to be rigorous assessment to ensure that regulatory changes would make things better, not just more complex and more expensive, and that the additional costs were going to be proportionate to the benefit that was being sought. But of course every single time that it is likely that the government will fail to get a regulatory change through that process, they write themselves an exemption. If you write yourself an exemption for a regulatory impact assessment every single time you are likely to fail it, you may as well throw the whole process overboard: it is not worth it.

The whole reason you have a regulatory impact assessment, the whole reason you have a process like a best practice regulation process, is so that you can put up a red flag whenever a regulatory change is going to be so expensive, so costly, with so much added red tape and without delivering proportionate benefits—put up a stop sign and say, 'This particular proposal has failed our rigorous regulatory impact assessment processes and therefore it should not proceed.' But of course every time there is a risk that a proposal would fail and the obvious conclusion in the national interest would be and should be that a proposal should not proceed, the government just writes itself an exemption. Why go through all of the carry-on and why spend all of the money on running through regulatory impact assessment processes for those proposals you know in advance are going to be okay? You need that sort of process as part of the checks and balances for proposals that are likely to be borderline or are going to make things more expensive without making them better.

This government has form. Over nearly six years, this government has introduced more than 21,000 new pieces of red tape. No wonder the cost of doing business is going up and up and up under this government. No wonder our international competitiveness is going down and down and down. No wonder that our economy is not growing as strongly as it could have and should have in the absence of all of this additional red and green tape that is being put forward by this government.

When the economy does not grow as fast as it could have, what is one of the consequences? As well as meaning that our economic prosperity and our living standards grow less fast, one of the consequences is that the government collects less revenue from the taxes it has on the books. This is why the government always has to come up with new or increased taxes—to chase its tail, which, in turn, has an impact on our economic growth. It means that our economy grows less fast, which means we raise less revenue from the taxes that are on our books, which means the government has got to come up with new taxes again or borrow more and ramp up the debt and deficits. This sort of bill is at the core of Labor's economic and fiscal mismanagement.

This bill will, yet again, increase approval times, which are already among the highest in the world. In New Zealand, you can get all of the approvals for a resource project within less than a year. In Australia, you would be lucky if you got through the process in five or six years. Of course, that is not enough. We have got to add more and more burdens. We have got to put more and more lead in our saddlebag because things are going so well—there are no economic challenges coming our way at all! We just take everything for granted. No matter how much more lead we put in our saddlebag—that is what this government thinks—it will not make any difference. The Greens, at least, are consistent. They want to shut the mining industry down. They are very clear about this. But people across Australia could have and should have expected better from the Labor Party.

We are all in favour of the appropriate protection of our water and water tables, but, of course, that is already covered by relevant state legislation and state processes. We are all in favour of appropriate environmental safeguards. We are all in favour of making sure our resources sector and our rural communities can coexist in harmony, delivering net benefits to the communities in which they operate. We are all in favour of evidence based decision making—decision making based on the science. But this bill does not do that. This bill is all about the politics of a weak government trying desperately to hang on to government for one more day, one more week, one more month.

Any legislative approach in this area should be carefully calibrated and be focused on getting the balance right. We need to protect the environment without unnecessarily and recklessly hurting our economy. This bill will do nothing to help protect our environment, yet it will hurt our economy. This legislation is all about pre-election politics from a desperate government led by an increasingly desperate Prime Minister. This is about a government with its back against the wall giving in to unreasonable demands from the key Independents they need to stay in government.

The truth is that we need to continue to go down the path of developing the resources sector, including and especially the coal seam gas sector, in a socially and environmentally sustainable way. We need to make sure that any additional regulation is actually making things better, not just more complex and more expensive for everyone. The truth is that there is already massive regulation in this area. There is already massive red tape and green tape from both the federal and state levels. There is absolutely no case to expand that further by listing a ninth matter of national environmental significance in the EPBC Act, triggering federal bureaucratic involvement to come on top of what is already happening at the state level.

In fact, we should simplify things. We should cut red tape and green tape. We should focus on bringing down the cost of doing business in Australia. We should focus on getting Australia back onto the global competitive edge. We have to make sure that we are in a position where we can take full advantage of the opportunities that will present themselves to us in the fastest growing part of the world, the Asia-Pacific. We need to make sure that we put ourselves in a position where we are as resilient as possible to deal with the challenges which are coming our way from ongoing circumstances in Europe and the United States. But of course, this government just does not seem to care. With this government it is all just blatantly about their political survival instead of focusing on good public policy in the national interest. The coalition has been very clear: should we be successful on 14 September—or whatever the date is going to be, on any revised timetable for the election—

Senator Xenophon interjecting—

Yes, Senator Xenophon: who knows? I do not think even the Labor Party knows what is going on with the government at the moment. But whenever the election is going to be—whether it is on 14 September or earlier or later—whatever the government decides, the coalition will be totally committed to policies that will actually strengthen our economy, that will strengthen our economic prosperity moving forward, that will focus on bringing down the cost of doing business in Australia and focus on making us more competitive internationally, that will actually make it easier to get businesses off the ground instead of putting more and more lead into their saddlebag.

One of the things we will do is make a serious effort to cut red and green tape instead of continuously adding to it as this government has done. One of the policies we have put forward in the environmental approvals area is our proposal for a one-stop shop for environmental approvals as part of our efforts to cut green tape. We will offer to establish a one-stop-shop process for both environmental applications and approvals whereby states would be able to opt in to the scheme. Where appropriate, matters will be referred back to the government. But, as a matter of principle, the states would actually be administering environmental approvals under both state and federal legislation. Existing environmental standards will be retained and rolled into a single process. By cutting green tape we would achieve better environmental outcomes as well as better economic outcomes—a more efficient and a more productive economy that would allow for better living standards greater resources for practical action to protect the environment. It is true that the increasing complexity and multilayered approvals system has led and continues to lead to inconsistencies in decisions and extra costs for no environmental gains. Deadlines should be set for decisions to be made, with the potential for penalties on government where there is unnecessary delay. This is going to be a very important reform should the coalition be successful at the next election.

But I will finish where I started: this is a very bad piece of legislation from a very bad government. I am very pleased that the Leader of the Government has arrived to listen to this. Perhaps he can throw some of these issues that we are debating here today back into the internal debates that are happening inside the Labor Party at the moment about the future direction of the government. This is very much a government that has lost its way. This is a government that his putting more and more lead into the saddlebag of our economy, that is making it harder and harder for people across Australia to be successful for no positive upside. This piece of legislation is going to weaken our economic growth prospects recklessly and irresponsibly without doing anything for the environment. Why would any government that cares about the national interest do that? And why would any government recklessly and irresponsibly make it harder for us to pursue an additional resource in terms of the coalseam gas opportunities—which will help ensure a reliable and affordable energy supply for us over the long-term future, which will help keep energy costs down, which will help ensure that in an environmentally efficient way we will be able to keep the lights on?

Of course we are all in favour of making sure that there are appropriate environmental safeguards. Of course we are all in favour of making sure that there are rigorous processes to ensure that all the risks are managed the way they ought to be. And I have confidence in the New South Wales state government and in the Queensland state government to manage those processes competently and properly. We do not need to second-guess the governments in New South Wales and Queensland in relation to these issues out of Canberra. These are good governments and they know what they are doing.

Let me just go to some of the stakeholder observations in relation to this, incidentally. This is what the Chief Executive Officer of the New South Wales Minerals Council, Mr Stephen Galilee, has said in relation to what he has describes as backward legislation: 'It is extremely disappointing that, in an election year, the federal government and Tony Windsor are seeking to create the impression that the state based assessment process is not good enough. This is completely wrong. Water is already a fundamental aspect of the assessment process for mining projects in New South Wales.' The National Farmers Federation has expressed deep concern about the potential for this bill to be extended to agriculture in the future: 'Water is a critical factor for our farmers, and our strong concern is that this bill could actually have perverse negative outcomes for our agricultural sector. What may on first glance look like a win for farmers in the short term could actually have long term unintended consequences for our current and future farmers.' And so it goes on.

This is a terrible piece of legislation. It is legislation that is not focused on our national interest. In fact, it is purely about the politics of a minority government desperately trying to hang on, irrespective of how bad this legislation is for Australia. And that is not the way things should be. Australians deserve much better than this. Australians deserve a government that works day in day out furthering the national interest. Australians deserve a government that does the right thing for the right reasons, that does not just get pushed around because it is threatened or bullied by one of the Independents, whom they need to keep them in government. We have never had this sort of culture here in the Senate. Here in the Senate, Independents negotiate better outcomes in legislation, but it does not go the existential nature of the government. What has been happening in the House of Representatives has been very bad for Australia. Any of these Independents are, figuratively speaking, able to put a gun to the government's head. That is when they can achieve these sorts of very bad outcomes. It really should not be going ahead. (Time expired)

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will not be existentialist in my contribution. I will not even mention Albert Camus! I just want to refer to the legislation. I indicate my support for this bill. There has been a significant amount of research done on the impact of coal seam gas mining on the environment, particularly in relation to groundwater and water supply. Several years ago I spoke at a groundwater conference in Adelaide and there was a real concern that this precious natural resource, this natural treasure, must be protected at all costs. We must be very careful not to impact on it in an undue sense. It is an issue because, by virtue of the Great Artesian Basin, it impacts on a number of states. South Australia, as always, is particularly vulnerable when it comes to the issue of water. It has been estimated that, over the next 20 years, there will be 40,000 coal seam gas wells in Australia. Conservative estimates suggest that coal seam gas wells could suck 300 gigalitres of water from the ground each year, which is a significant diminution of groundwater in this country.

I understand where the clash is here. There is a need for the Murray-Darling Basin to continue to be the food bowl of Australia. That prime agricultural land provides a future not just for this nation but for overseas as well, exporting into Asia in particular, in terms of clean green produce. That is very important. But there are also increasing demands in terms of energy needs, and that is a factor that needs to be considered as well. The problem is that, if we do anything to compromise our prime agricultural land production, that is something that cannot be fixed easily, and that really concerns me.

I note that Senator Birmingham and Senator Cormann, among others, have commented about the level of red tape—green tape, if you like—in relation to this. They are matters that I think ought to be dealt with appropriately. Obviously, if there are appropriate approval processes, they must be streamlined, efficient and effective. It is important that we have an extra layer of protection for our prime agricultural land and for our water resources.

Because the Great Artesian Basin impacts on a number of states, one state could do something in its approval process that could impact on another state—South Australia, for instance. That concerns me significantly. If we rely simply on state or territory approval, we risk the same problems we have seen with the Murray-Darling Basin. One state's actions can impact on the whole system and others are left to clean up the mess, which they have no control over, down the track. So there are some important safeguards for our environment. There is a big debate about what the rights of landholders are in relation to mining projects. It is not commonly understood that farmers' rights over their land are circumscribed by virtue of a clash with mining laws. There need to be greater safeguards for our farmers.

There are many unknowns about the process of coal seam gas mining. I am concerned about its impact on the watertable. We have set up a $250 million fund for expert scientific advice and I note that that legislation was improved as a result of the intervention of Senator Heffernan and others in considering issues of salinity and the impact of land use. As a result, an amendment was put forward, which I co-sponsored with Senator Heffernan, my colleagues in the Australian Greens and the DLP senator, Senator John Madigan. These are important issues that we must consider. In South Australia we can see only too clearly what happens when environmental resources are sacrificed for short-term gain.

The Great Artesian Basin is one of the largest underground water reservoirs in the world. It underlies approximately 22 per cent of Australia, occupying an area of over 1.7 million square kilometres beneath the arid and semi-arid parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory. The total value of all agricultural production supported by the basin was estimated back in 2007 at $3.5 billion per year. That is why it is important that we are very cautious when it comes to the use of our precious groundwater resources. That is why I support this bill. It is incumbent on this government and any future government to look at issues of dealing with red tape and streamlining approval processes, but at this stage the important factors to consider are the protection of our water resources and the impact on my home state of South Australia if we simply leave this up to the states.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all senators for their contribution to the debate on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment Bill 2013. The bill will amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the EPBC Act, to create a new matter of national environmental significance for coal seam gas and large coalmining developments which have or are likely to have a significant impact on a water resource, providing a strong legal basis for protection. When enacted, the bill will enable the robust assessment of a significant impact on a water resource arising from coal seam gas and large coalmining developments. It will also ensure that there are appropriate measures in place to manage those impacts before future coal seam gas and large coalmining projects proceed.

In addition, the bill includes an amendment to ensure the Commonwealth retains responsibility for undertaking environmental assessments in relation to the water trigger. This will provide the community with confidence that the impacts of these industries are being managed in a way that secures the long-term future of our vital water resources. The bill includes transitional provisions to minimise disruption to the assessment of existing projects as far as possible while also meeting the objectives of the amendments to provide robust assessments of coal seam gas and large coalmining on water resources.

Those that have opposed this bill have claimed that it will bring delays and increased green tape for industry in an already challenging economic climate. The Behre Dolbear report 2013 Ranking of countries for mining investment: “where not to invest”tells a different story. The report indicates that Australia has ranked first for the last two years based on conditions that promote investment growth in the mining sector. The report shows that Australia continues to have the fewest permitting delays of the 25 countries reviewed.

In conclusion, the changes to the EPBC Act proposed by this bill will provide a national approach for protection of water resources where they are impacted by coal seam gas and large coalmining, ensuring water resources receive the highest possible level of protection. I commend the bill to the chamber.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.