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

How the years fly—quickly. I will take you back to November 2011, when the Nationals released a blueprint on coal seam gas that outlines five key principles covering the environmental, economic and social impact of coal seam gas developments:

1. no coal seam gas development can damage aquifers or water quality,

2. no developments should occur on prime agricultural land,

3. no developments should occur in close proximity to residential areas,

4. landowners deserve a return, not just compensation, from a resource on their land, and

5. real investment must be made back in the communities that generate our resource wealth.

I would like to expand on those principles, one by one. First, 'no coal seam gas development can damage aquifers or water quality': this is a vital issue. The underground water—and I refer to places like Liverpool Plains—is vital. That is some of the best country—I will not say in Australia—in the world. That land is only about three per cent of this planet Earth. It needs to be protected. It is a food bowl for the future generations to come. While I am about this place probably the thing I concentrate on most of all as a senator is the question, what do we do for future generations? I look back at the history. I look back at my family, my grandfather fighting in France during the First World War, putting his life on the line for the democracy we enjoy today, and likewise my late father, Reg. He was rear-gunner in a Lancaster bomber. They developed our land, and it is up to us to protect our land. That is why I was saying only recently that when my wife and I purchased our small farm near Inverell the first thing we did was take a bulldozer into that farm and improve the contour banks. The contour banks were getting flat, which means they faced serious soil erosion. We do not want our soil washed away; we want to protect it.

Point No. 2: 'no developments should occur on prime agricultural land'—and how true that is. I refer again to Liverpool Plains, that great country where I do not think there should be any sort of mining. It should be protected from coal seam gas and coal mining, and I will expand on that in a minute. And No. 3, 'no developments should occur in close proximity to residential areas': if people are there first, those people should be respected. If you build a house, for example, and all of a sudden the council comes along and puts a set of cattle yards alongside your saleyards, then you were there first and you should be compensated. If you happen to buy a house near cattle yards that have been there for many years, then be prepared for the noise and do not expect compensation. It is your decision. But people who were there first should be respected and have peace of life.

The fourth point is on royalties, because this gas used to be owned by the farmers, until the state governments took it off them—the Labor governments in South Australia and New South Wales especially. They should be compensated for their resource or any interruptions, and not just a tuppence or a box of beer but proper compensation, a proper royalty to them. And when those royalties flow into the states they should be putting some of that money back into the community, just like the Royalties for Regions in Western Australia. But what has happened is that this has become a political issue. There is far more politics involved than anything, now.

I want to say this: I went and saw for myself. About eight months ago I went to Santos's works at Narrabri. We went out to the wells they have drilled in the Pilliga Scrub, and Pilliga Scrub it is. I have been fortunate enough to spend all of my life in rural Australia, and I know I can look at land and tell you whether it is good land or it is really ordinary land—what we call 'backwards store wallaby country'. When we went to the well out there in the Pilliga Scrub, it was pretty ordinary country. I do not think you would feed a wether on 15 acres. You might even see the odd wallaroo, but I think they would be battling for a feed. It is very ordinary country.

I went to Santos for one reason: to find out for myself because we hear so much emotion, so many complaints, so many worries et cetera. The group—there was a busload of us—saw the geologists and the description of underground land. I said, 'Now, you prove to me how you will not disrupt or pollute the Artesian Basin catchment here. You prove to me how you will not interfere with underground aquifers.' They took us all through the whole works. We said, 'What about all the salt? What are you going to do with all the salt you pull out? What about the dirty water?' They took us to the water ponds they were building, with three layers of sealant so not a drop leaks through. We said, 'What are you going to do with the water?' 'When it is filtrated, it will be irrigating next door; we will probably grow a lucerne crop.' So they took us right through the whole issue.

The sad thing about it was that the gas they are producing now is flared—the methane gas is just burning away 24/7. You cannot use it for the gas-fired power station at Narrabri, because under the law if that gas has been extracted through exploration, before you are licensed, you are not allowed to use it for commercial use. Instead of just burning the gas 24/7 you could hook it up, in a matter of hours, to the local gas-fired power station and provide electricity for some 300 houses. But no—it just burns away. That, to me, is crazy.

New South Wales imports 95 per cent of its gas. Where does it get the five per cent it has got? It is actually from the AGL site out at Camden, west of Sydney, where they have had a number of wells—I am not sure how many; I will have to go there and look for myself—that have been there for about 19 years providing that gas. It has not been a problem, thank goodness. It has not been a problem and I hope they are doing it right. If there has been a problem it is certainly something I have not heard about. Then several months ago I went up to the Santos operation in Roma, in Queensland. We actually spoke to the landowners. We saw what they were doing. We spoke to the businesses. We spoke to the mayor and the deputy mayor and the councillors. One happens to be in local government and owns land with coal seam gas on his property. We went right through once again: 'Prove to us you're not damaging the water.' That is, to me, such a huge issue.

I found what Senator Lazarus said about people with air quality control, bleeding noses et cetera. That is really concerning, so I am going to make my way to Chinchilla at some stage, too, I can assure you of that, to see for myself. I do have some doubts about that because with the coal seam gas at Roma and Narrabri we did not see any of that. It is the first time I have heard of that. What are the environmental and pollution agencies doing? What is the state government doing? What are we doing? I have not had that come to my office; I have not heard of that before. But if it is true then it is very concerning.

Santos and AGL have assured me in my office here—not far from the chamber; you know where it is—that they will never go onto a farm if the landowner does not want them. I have said to them on many occasions, 'Will you honour that word?' and they have said, 'We certainly will.' When I went to Narrabri, where they were working with the landowners, the landowners were happy—they were getting payments. They were getting a good source of income. I would imagine those in the Roma district would be the same. In fact, it is a source of income which would be very welcome given the drought they have experienced for several years there. We kept saying to them, 'Prove to us you're not damaging this. Prove to us you're not damaging that. Prove to us you're protecting the environment.' One of the reassuring things I did get from them was that they employ their own environmental experts who are, in their very words, far more severe to them than any of the government environmental experts. I said to them, 'If you make one mess of this you'll be wiped out; you'll be shut down.'

I do have faith in Santos as a professional company. I have not visited the other companies. I have heard bad things about other companies. I have faith in AGL as a professional company. One thing I think is most important is that this is not an industry for cowboys. This is an industry for professionals, with geologists, environmentalists—and people who do not drop their cameras! This is vital.

I come back to those issues around protecting things for the future. It has become a very big political issue. I will give you some examples. I want to go back to the Liverpool Plains—those magnificent black soil plains with huge amounts of water underneath them. I started this job in July 2008; in January 2009 we went up and met with the Caroona group. There was former Senator Barnaby Joyce, now agricultural minister; Senator Fiona Nash; Mark Coulton, member for Parkes; and me. We went and met with the people. We took a bit of bark off and shed a bit of skin off; that is part of politics and you take that. But then, we shook hands as adults should do and we agreed to work together.

Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're on both sides of the road, Senator Williams, and you know that. You say one thing when you're out there and you don't—

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! This is not a time for debate.

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

Senator Rhiannon, I will get to you in a minute. We shook hands and agreed to work together.

But, I will tell you what, Senator Rhiannon: I will take your interjection. What happened then is that Mr Tim Duddy, representative of the Caroona Coal Action Group, was down here only months later with the former Greens leader Mr Bob Brown, putting a wedge in. Senator Rhiannon would be very familiar with Mr Duddy because he wrote letters to the papers prior to the election when you were elected. He was in here forming wedge motions. To me, it was not a 'shake hands and let's work together.' It was a political stunt which still goes on today. That is why I am not even worried about your political stunts—because when you look at the Liverpool Plains and the Shenhua coalmine, who has done the work? Why has it stopped today? It has stopped today because the member for New England—

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Williams, I will remind you to direct your comments through the chair.

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

Sure. And what about the interjections? Standing order 197—is that still current?

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have asked the senator to stop her interjections.

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

Thank you very much. So the politics continues. But let's get to the Shenhua mine on the Liverpool Plains. Who has now brought it to a stop? The member for new England, Mr Barnaby Joyce, the Minister for Agriculture, took Mr Hunt up there. Thank goodness for the scientific money that is available—$150 million. I give credit to the former member for New England, Tony Windsor, for bringing that forward—supported by our side of politics, as well, of course.

The politics plays on. Here is a great example; I have to read this out. This is important to you, Mr Acting Deputy President Whish-Wilson. The coalition government in New South Wales, the Liberal-National government, which has been there almost four years, has not licenced any coal seam gas developments. They are all existing licences from the previous Labor government.

Now the politics goes on, as Mr Draper, who was a former Independent member for Tamworth and a member when all of these exploration licences were approved, now comes back and says, 'We're going to fix this issue.' It was the Australian Labor Party in government in New South Wales—and I am sure those opposite will be listening—that approved all of these. It was the Australian Labor Party in New South Wales that took the $300 million from the Chinese company Shenhua and put it in its coffers in agreeing to the exploration of the Shenhua mine. Of course, it was a government very much backed by who? The Greens! Senator Rhiannon, as a member of the legislative council back in those days, was probably in the parliament and working closely alongside Carr, Iemma—I cannot remember all of the premiers they had at that stage—when all of these approvals actually went forward.

Now, we have someone like Mr Draper, who was the member for Tamworth while all these approvals went forward, running for the seat of Tamworth and screaming out that this is a big issue. He is saying that he is going to solve the problem. Give us a break! This is a case of crocodile tears at best when the very person who was the member was sitting there with his colleagues in the Labor Party and the Greens and approved all these very issues.

I will go to what we can do at a federal level. Under the Constitution, we cannot control the land. But we have the Water Act, the EPBC Act—it was brought in by this side of parliament many years ago by Senator Robert Hill. That is why environment minister Greg Hunt has been to the Liverpool Plains very recently. And he was well received, I believe. What has happened now? It has been put on ice so that the scientists can go in and get the facts about what is going on.

I want to add one issue when talking about all this mining on prime agricultural land: something that I was informed about by Senator Heffernan was coal dust. When coalmines were developed in the Hunter Valley, I remember being told by my colleague Senator Heffernan how the coalmining industry bought the neighbouring farms. There was a dairy farm next door. The coalmining company said, 'You can stay on your farm. We've bought it, but you can stay there and continue your business.' It was only a matter of time before the milk from those dairy cows was contaminated, because of the coal dust. That is another reason why I do not agree with the coalmine on the Liverpool Plains or coal seam gas being there, because the next thing will be the dust. As I said in The Northern Daily Leader yesterday, this is a real issue that we do not hear much about: the coal dust from the open mine settling on the food—whatever crop: sorghum, corn, wheat, barley or peas—that needs to be produced in the safe, hygienic and clean manner that we are so proud of in this country. So there is a problem in itself. No country should be totally left alone.

As I said, the politics comes into this all the time. A lady came up to me at AgQuip and said, 'You can't have any of this coal seam gas. It's terrible.' I said: 'Have you got a barbecue?' She said: 'Yes'. I said: 'Where does the gas come from? That is CH4—the methane that powers your barbecue.' If you are going to have coal seam gas, it must be done correctly; it cannot be raced into. You cannot have cowboy companies doing it. It must be done professionally. As I said, five per cent of New South Wales' gas supply has been there for many years now. It seems to be working well. I have not visited the area but I have visited Santos at Narrabri and Roma. It is good to talk to landowners. In stark contradiction of what Senator Lazarus was saying, the landowners seem to just say, 'No problems; good company; work well; up-front; explained everything. Yes, we're getting some good royalties, and it's not interfering with our farming.' This is what the farmers are telling me when I speak to them face to face. It is not what I am reading in the papers in some biased report put together by whoever.

We need energy. We know that. We know we have a lot of coal. We know that we can use that gas, if it is done properly. But if we do not do it properly, we are going to make a mess of our environment for future generations. That is the key issue. I have said all along: tread slowly, tread cautiously. Yes, we have good supplies of energy. It is great to have it in Australia instead of importing. Ninety-one per cent of the fuel we import is from overseas—petrol, aeroplane fuel and diesel. We need to rely on our own clean energy, but not at the risk of destroying the environment for future generations.

Our predecessors have done their bit to grow our country and look after our country. Sure, we made some errors on the farm. Sure, we cleared too many trees in the Mallee country. Sure, there is too much wind erosion. Now, with better practices of farming, like direct drilling et cetera, and leaving the stubbles on the soil, we are doing it much better. That is the basis of this whole argument: you need to do it properly, not rush into it, see that the state governments do their job and that the federal government, through the limited powers we have in this place when it comes to mining, do our job properly. I have confidence that the environment minister, Minister Hunt, will do exactly that in relation to many of these issues.

We need to protect the environment for the future, or there will be a very blunt, very dark and very damaged future for those in this country, especially our farmers, who have to grow so much food in the years to come to feed the growing world population. Our reputation for food in this country is second to none. We have great farmers who do a great job of producing great food. We need to keep that and preserve it for future generations.

Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this debate about the coal seam gas industry. I recognise the well-intentioned motives of Senator Lazarus in putting forward this resolution. I have also sat with Senator Lazarus as part of the inquiry into certain aspects of Queensland government administration. We have listened to some quite concerning submissions in respect of certain practices that have occurred in the industry. I for one do recognise that there are some community concerns.

But I think it is important in this debate that all of the information be made available to the chamber so that properly informed decision can be made. I think it is important that there should also be a focus on the scientific evidence that is before us and that a rational approach be adopted in respect of this particular issue. I preface my following remarks by talking about the fact that there should always be community consultation involved as this industry progresses. I think it is important to talk about some of this extra information.

It should be well known that the processes employed by the CSG industry have been in use for more than 65 years and in more than two million wells around the world. The CSG industry has been around for decades and it has been a significant source of gas production in Queensland for almost 20 years. The gas industry and government approvers and regulators have detailed knowledge and understanding of the processes employed by the industry. This includes knowledge about the chemicals being used in the process. It may be of interest to senators to know that water and sand comprise more than 99 per cent of the volume of the fluids used in the mining process. Companies must identify the chemicals being used in their operations and detail any likely interactions with water and rock formations in the area which is the subject of mining.

I would encourage those with concerns about the practices employed in the industry to educate themselves on the technology and on the efforts to understand this technology taken by the states and the Northern Territory. I firstly refer to a report by Mary O'Kane, the Chief Scientist of New South Wales, who conducted an independent review of coal seam gas activities in New South Wales. That report was released in September last year. The review concluded that the technical challenges and risks posed by the CSG industry can in general be managed through: careful designation of areas appropriate in geological and land-use terms with CSG extraction; high standards of engineering and professionalism in CSG companies; the creation of a state whole-of-environment data repository so that data from CSG industry operations can be interrogated as needed and in the context of the wider environment; comprehensive monitoring of CSG operations with ongoing automatic scrutiny of the resulting data; a well trained and certified workforce; and application of new technological developments as they become available. The report concludes that the risks associated with CSG exploration and production can be managed. With an almost identical result, the Northern Territory's inquiry recently conducted by Allan Hawke AC found that the environmental risks associated with some of the more contentious practices can be managed effectively subject to the creation of a robust regulatory regime. That report was finalised on 28 November last year.

At budget estimates last year, Dr Chris Pigram, the CEO of Geoscience Australia, made comments to the effect that the concerns around the practices employed by the industry are unwarranted and 'they do not represent a problem for the community by and large'. Geoscience Australia, a Commonwealth government agency, has carefully studied the issue and provided advice to the government to ensure that the impacts of the coal seam gas developments on groundwater systems are minimised and mitigated. As part of its advice to government, Geoscience Australia recommended an adaptive management approach that is underpinned by four principles: the first principle is the explicit requirement to minimise and mitigate any impacts on groundwater during coal-seam gas developments; the second principle is that adaptive management regimes should be underpinned by the best groundwater models available and that these models should be continually improved as new information becomes available; the third principle is that a regional scale multistate groundwater model be developed so that the potential cumulative impacts of multiple developments can be monitored, assessed and the potential impacts mitigated; and the fourth principle is that long-term water balances of the groundwater system must be maintained. All predevelopment groundwater pressure levels should be maintained wherever possible.

The Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development was established by the former Labor government as a statutory body under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 in late 2012. The committee consists of eight members with extensive scientific qualifications and expertise in the fields of geology, hydrogeology, hydrology, ecology, eco-toxicology, natural resource management and environment protection. Under the EPBC Act, the committee has several legislative functions: to provide scientific advice to the Commonwealth environment minister and relevant state ministers on the water related impacts of proposed coal seam gas or large coal mining developments; provide scientific advice to the Commonwealth environment minister on bioregional assessments including the methodology, research priorities and projects; publish and disseminate scientific information about the impacts of coal seam gas and large coal mining activities on water resources.

The reports by Mary O'Kane and Allan Hawke are recent, are credible and are independent. Along with the advice provided by Geoscience Australia and the independent expert scientific committee, I would encourage all senators to make the most of the expert research and educate themselves on this issue. I would particularly reference my South Australian Liberal Party colleagues to take note of this advice. The South Australian Liberal Party's inquiry into the industry—an industry which supports thousands of jobs in that state—has been characterised by the outgoing Managing Director of Beach Energy, Reg Nelson, as an investment killer.

Global energy markets are being transformed by gas from coal seams, shale and tight gas. The use of CSG as an energy source is longstanding and accounts for 33 per cent of eastern states' domestic gas production. For example, 95 per cent of the gas used in Queensland comes from CSG. CSG powers a number of domestic electrical generation projects throughout Queensland, including the Origin Energy-operated Darling Downs power station and the Braemar-2 power station.

The policy challenge for state governments is twofold: to ensure the appropriate compensation of landholders for the access and use of their land and to ensure that coal seam gas is exploited on behalf of its citizens, unlocking an important transition fuel, providing a source of employment and export income, and generating a long-term revenue source through royalties and rents.

Coal seam gas exploration represents an immense opportunity for Australia, particularly regional Australia. LNG projects in Queensland's CSG to LNG industry are worth more than $70 billion and are responsible for almost 30,000 jobs. At its peak, the industry workforce was 40,000 people, including 7,000 direct employees and 33,000 contracted employees. It is important to note that more than 5,000 land access agreements have been signed in my home state between landholders and gas companies since 2012. That is not to say that there have not been some issues in respect of individual landholders. As I said earlier, I acknowledge that there has been some community concern around some of these negotiations.

The policy challenge for the Commonwealth is to ensure more gas production and the best possible environmental protection. The industry has created good, sustainable jobs, particularly in regional communities; boosted the economy at both state and federal levels; and will deliver billions in government revenue. In terms of regional growth—and I note that Senator Lazarus talked about the Chinchilla area—a CSIRO study found that in CSG affected areas there was a reversal of population decline in the age category 25 to 29 years during the period 2006 to 2011. There seems to have been some effect in the alleviation of poverty in some of these regional areas. The town of Chinchilla was a standout out in this particular study, as it went from being a location with higher rural poverty than surrounding regions to having one of the lowest rates of rural poverty.

I think the chamber should acknowledge that this industry is one that will lift Australia's export income and provide states and the Commonwealth government with a significant source of revenue. As a cleaner alternative to coal-fired power, LNG is an essential part of the global solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provides many jobs and opportunities in regional Australia. I do not resile from some of the comments I made earlier that in the past there have been some practices where the industry has not been its own best friend. In order for this chamber to make a decision on this matter I think that a proper analysis of the scientific evidence needs to be had.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am really pleased to rise to speak about the health and environmental impacts of coal seam gas. I must sound like a bit of a broken record doing this. I welcome the fact that we have now got some company from other political parties who are also learning how dangerous this industry is. I am very disappointed that the old parties—we have heard so far from the Nationals and now from Labor—who are effectively apologists for the industry. I am sure we will hear similar sorts of gushings when the Liberals get up to speak, but that is their prerogative. I certainly will not be doing that tonight. I want to talk about the absolute danger of this industry to water, to land, to human health, to the climate, to the reef and to those very regional communities that we are meant to represent here in this place.

The first parliamentary activity that I undertook when I was elected to this place was to participate in an inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin. The inquiry had formed a subset to look into the impacts of coal seam gas in the Murray-Darling Basin. It was an incredibly formative experience. I was four days into the job and rostered on to go to Roma, to Dalby and then to Narrabri. It was a fascinating experience because—yes, like Senator Williams—we got the spin from the Santoses of the world and, yes, they took us on their tour of their site. Unlike Senator Williams, I kept an open mind and also listened to the community members and the scientists rather than just listening to the industry. But then, the Greens do not take $200,000 from Santos, as the Nationals have done in South Australia.

What we heard from the communities, even back then—3½ years ago—was that they were really concerned about the long-term impacts on their groundwater supply. They were concerned about not only the quality of the groundwater and the potential for contamination but also the potential for the groundwater table to drop quite significantly in some instances. They were worried about where they were going to get their water from, and this was in some of our best food-producing land in Queensland. Other Queensland senators know that we do not have a lot of great soil in Queensland. Where we do have good soil it should be kept for food production. So those community members and farmers were right to be concerned.

We then heard from experts, and they have continued to speak out as the years have rolled on, about how much we do not know about underground water and the interactions between coal seams and aquifers, and how much we do not know about the potential long-term effect that we are having on the Great Artesian Basin, for example, as well as on particular aquifers that underpin much of our land, particularly our food-producing land

In that instance I can cite the National Water Commission, the CSIRO, the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development. All of these expert bodies keep reminding all of us here in this place that we cannot guarantee that there will not be long-term impacts on groundwater from this industry. The concern there is that, because water moves so slowly, those companies will have up and gone. They will have done their rehab—probably to a cruddy level, as usually happens—they will have got their deposit back and they will have gone. You will then find that the water impacts have been done and cannot be rectified. That is one of our concerns.

That is water impacts. In terms of land impacts we heard some fascinating evidence from farmers back then that in fact coal seam gas was interfering with the surface operation of their farming. Some of the land managers who have chosen to adopt more modern, more sustainable practices and had purchased quite expensive GPS guided equipment were telling us that the coal seam gas wells were interfering with their GPS equipment. They were not able to use these more modern precision agriculture techniques, because the coal seam gas well had buggered up the GPS. That was a real eye-opener. We then heard that, with the criss-crossing of the well pads, the roads, the pipes, the diesel generators, the trucks, the people coming onto your land at all hours of the day and night, this was in fact a massive invasion of what had formerly been good-quality, food-producing land. It was really troubling to hear already the social concern that those people were having.

That has only intensified in the 3½ years that we have continued to campaign against this dangerous industry. Just last week in Toowoomba we heard of terrible distress that communities are being put through in this country. It is a very unequal playing field. They do not have the bargaining power with these big companies, because the law does not give them the right to say no to gas on their land—or coal, for that matter. They are being bullied and harassed. They are concerned about the health impacts of coal seam gas, an area which really does warrant further scrutiny. We have heard an awful lot of anecdotal evidence about the health impacts, whether they be respiratory, people getting bloody noses or people getting headaches, whether that is caused by the vibrations or the ambient methane emissions. Somebody has to look into this; and, unfortunately, the state health departments are not doing that either at all or to a sufficient level to give anyone any confidence about this industry. The anecdotal evidence is really stacking up.

It was heartbreaking to hear those people give evidence in Toowoomba the week before last about how distressed and worried they were about their land and how worried they were that their kids would not be able to farm that land anymore, that they would have to move away and that their very health might dictate that they needed to move but did not have the money to do so. So I quibble in particular with Senator Ketter's inference that somehow this is some great economic boon for those communities—far from it. As we know, fly-in fly-out work across the whole resources sector creates a massive disparity between those who are employed in the mines or the gas industry and those who are not. We see cost of living go through the roof in those communities, particularly in the cost of housing. Many of the workers in those small businesses are attracted to work in the industry, and therefore the basic services that people are used to, whether a mechanic or a taxi driver, are no longer accessible. It changes the very fabric of a community, and with those fly-in fly-out workers we see that profit being taken out of those local communities. They are simply left with the social dislocation as well as with the environmental impacts.

We have now started to look at the issue of climate impacts. The CSIRO have finally released stage 1 of a report into fugitive emissions. We know that these wells and pipes leak like a sieve, and this is methane, which is at least 23 times more potent a greenhouse gas than even carbon dioxide, so this is dangerous stuff we are playing with. I note that Senator Williams mentioned that often this gas is just flared. That carbon is just going straight into the atmosphere, so I could not agree more with him on that one small point of his contribution.

With the climate impacts here the CSIRO looked at a number of wells and found that some were hyperemitting. Some were emitting a vast amount of methane. They acknowledge in their own studies that they looked at only a very small sample size and that more work needed to be done. They also acknowledged they had not looked at shale gas and tight gas; they had only considered coal seam gas. Clearly, given that shale and tight gas are the new gas frontiers that are trying to roll out over South Australia, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and even Victoria, those studies need to be done now.

I guess that is our key point here. This industry has got everything it has wanted. The approvals have been handed out hand over fist without the science having been done. We have now seen the establishment of the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development, and the Greens welcome that. Unfortunately, they are merely an advisory body and their excellently strong advice—and they are very worth reading because they often point out the massive flaws in the information provided to regulators by proponents—is frequently ignored. They almost always say: 'We don't have enough information. We don't know what the impacts are going to be. On the proponent's own information we're already predicting metres and metres of a groundwater table drop. You need to ask these people for more information.' And the regulators just say: 'Oh, whatever. We'll just hand out the approval. They can do those studies later. Let's give them conditional approval'—which, of course, is just a tick to start that destruction.

What has been particularly heartening over the years, though, has been the community resistance that has started against the absolute pillaging that this industry represents. I want to pay tribute tonight to the people from Lock the Gate, particularly Drew Hutton—full disclosure: a life member of the Greens—who went on to establish Lock the Gate, a movement which has just ignited across the country and which is giving community members hope that they can stand and protect their land, their water and their futures from this rapacious industry and that they will not be bullied into letting their land be ruined, even though the law is not on their side. So I want to thank Lock the Gate for the work that they have done, the attention they have brought to this issue and the hope that they are giving people.

I had the huge pleasure of attending the Bentley blockade last year. That was a shale gas well that was proposed to be sunk in that northern rivers region. The power of that community protest—as well as a few technicalities and quite a lot of political pressure—stopped that from going ahead. It was the most wonderful celebration to be part of, because those people finally felt powerful again. After years of feeling like their concerns had been ignored—mostly in Nationals territory but certainly by both of the big parties as well—they finally felt some hope and some power again. That is what we want to bring back to this place. That is what we want to empower landholders to do again. It is to protect their land and their water. They are producing food for all of us. We are a net food exporter and the Greens want that to continue. It is going to be more important as food security becomes even more of a problem, with climate change intensifying as the years roll out. We need to be protecting our good-quality food-producing land. That is why, once again, this week I have reintroduced into this place a bill to give landholders the right to say no to coal, to coal-seam gas, to shale gas and to tight gas on their land—a right which they do not have. There is one tiny tenure in Western Australia where the owners have that right; under no state law in the rest of the country does anybody have the right to say no to resource activities pillaging their land. We think that is wrong. When the science is saying you could do some serious damage to your land and your water for all time, why should landholders have to bear that risk and why should governments be approving that? Somebody has to take a stand and protect that land. We would like to give landholders that right.

The first version of my bill was of course voted down in this place about a year ago when the Nationals, the Labor Party and the Liberal Party all voted against it—only the Greens and a few of the crossbenchers at the time supported it. I have now reintroduced that bill, and I have added a ban on fracking. It is important to mention this, because hydraulic fracking is an incredibly dangerous process whereby billions of litres of water and sand and chemicals are blasted into coal seams to break them open so that the gas can flow. Fracking has been shown overseas to potentially contribute to earthquakes and potentially it can contribute to connections being made between the aquifers and the coal seams. Of course those coal seams have all sorts of things in them—they are hypersaline, as well as having naturally occurring carcinogenic chemicals—benzene, toluene, ethylene and xylene. In New York state and Vermont, in the USA, fracking is banned—it is banned because it is dangerous. Counties and cities in California, Colorado, Texas, Hawaii, Delaware and Washington DC have also imposed either bans or moratoriums on fracking. I notice this week that, thank goodness, Tasmania has issued a five-year moratorium on fracking and Victoria, likewise, has extended its moratorium on fracking. This is not a safe process and we do not understand enough about it to allow it to continue, so my bill includes a ban on hydraulic fracturing for gas extraction.

This week, and most disappointingly in the context of the New South Wales state election, we saw Mr Barnaby Joyce, from the other place, out in the community repeatedly championing the fact that he did not want the Liverpool Plains to be ripped up by the Shenhua coalmine and he did not want the mine to go ahead without further assessment. He wanted the federal water trigger—which he had voted against—to be used to get more information. I put a motion to this place which said that the Liverpool Plains—that beautiful black soil which is 40 per cent more productive than any other agricultural land in the country—should be off limits to coal mining and coal-seam gas extraction. What do you think happened? The Nationals ran out of the chamber—they fled. It was a one-minute division and I watched them flee out of the chamber. Rather than go on record and either stand up to their coalition partners or buckle, they chose not to go on record at all.

I thought I would try again, because the Victorian Nationals—there is a by-election happening in South Gippsland at the moment—have come out with a good policy at their state level, and they have said that landholders should have the right to say no. We agree. That is the very legislation we have had in this place for years now. I put that motion today acknowledging that policy and calling on this place to agree with that very basic proposition. Likewise, we saw the Nationals leave the chamber for the vote. Senator Barry O'Sullivan hovered around the back here, presumably to make sure nobody else came in, and then he left with two seconds on the clock. It was a very disturbing sight to witness and I think that people in the areas of both Tamworth and South Gippsland would be really disappointed that the Nationals say one thing when they are at home in those areas and then, when they have the chance to support that view in the parliament, they do not take that opportunity. That is really disappointing.

We have these fabulous powers to look at the water impacts of coal mining and coal-seam gas extraction, which Mr Hunt has used to seek more information about the Shenhua coalmine in the Liverpool Plains. The huge irony is that those are the very powers that his government and he himself want to palm off to state governments, with their grand plan to completely gut our federal environmental laws and leave state governments to make all of those decisions about internationally significant environmental icons. The irony has been somewhat lost on Minister Hunt and the Abbott government that those powers which they are now using to positive effect to arm themselves with better information so that they can hopefully make the right call—history certainly would not indicate they will—are the very powers that they are intending to palm off to any old state government because they just cannot be bothered looking after matters of national environmental significance anymore. It is not their bag.

I asked in estimates about how much we know about coal-seam gas extraction and the studies that are being done. It was quite farcical because there were so many issues that were out of scope of the studies being done. The fugitive emissions had a very narrow focal point, and the impacts of contamination on deep aquifers were only in the modelling stage and were out of scope for particular studies. It rammed home to me how selective and poor our scientific knowledge is about these industries. Yet, all the indications we have so far are that there are incredible risks. We have the precautionary principle on our law books and that is meant to guide our decision makers, and particularly our environmental decision makers. We do not know whether we might cause lasting damage to something as precious as water, in the driest inhabited continent on the whole planet, so why are they rolling out these approvals willy-nilly, like confetti, when the science is saying hang on, we really do not know what lasting damage we might be doing? We know enough to know there are some serious misgivings about this industry. It has been disappointing to watch the continued fawning of all of the parties in this place over the industry.

I want to draw attention to something that Senator Williams raised in his speech. He said he had gone on a site visit, chaperoned by Santos, and he had asked them some really tough questions and had been reassured by their answers. I went on a similar site visit with them and asked them similar tough questions, and I was not satisfied with their answers. I was not satisfied with just relying on and trusting them

That is why we have independent scientific bodies and why communities are so concerned, because these guys are absolute spin merchants. They are paid very well, they are very slick, they try to reassure you that everything is find and then, when you consult with the genuinely independent scientists, you hear a completely different story. I would urge Senator Williams not to just accept Santos's word for it, because they have a bit of a financial interest in saying to him that everything will be fine. I mentioned earlier that I was very disappointed when the South Australian Nationals accepted $200,000 from Santos. It would be great, if they could give that money back.

I will wrap up by saying that I am really pleased to be able to have the ability to discuss this issue once again in the Senate. The motion focuses on the human health and the water impacts of coal seam gas. If it were up to the Greens, we would be including shale and tight gas in the scope of this, and we would also include coalmining. And we would not just look at the health impacts of course: the environmental impacts are crucial when all of the science is telling us that we are putting at risk such precious resources, like our very land, our very water and our climate, not to mention our reef through which much of this gas is exported. For heaven's sake, why are we favouring the private profits of these big gas companies that send that money offshore and leave us with the environmental damage and communities that have been absolutely ripped up?

I am really proud that the Greens are standing with those community members, giving them hope, and I am thrilled that we now have some company in this place with others who are likewise concerned about this industry. I would beg each of the other senators in this place: please take the time—I know we are all busy people but this is really important stuff and the stakes are high—to get some independent advice and inform yourselves about how much we do not know about this industry and the real dangers that it poses, instead of just taking the money and handing out approvals like confetti.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to stand up and say that I will not be supporting this motion. Respectfully, I want to outline why: in part B of the motion we are calling on the government to stop approving coal seam gas projects, and, with respect, the federal government's role in coal seam gas project development and approvals is limited.

Senator Waters, I want to touch on something that you briefly mentioned. The water trigger was brought in by the Labor-Greens coalition, but the Labor Party never employed it—not once; not once on any coal seam gas issue. Conversely, this government, because of our commitment to using science and an evidentiary basis in the policy decisions we make, has applied the water trigger to over 50 projects since taking office—that is 50 projects. Moreover, the Independent Expert Scientific Committee has approved 15 scientific reports informing bioregional assessments and 20 scientific reports on risk to environmental health from chemicals, ecosystems, water and aquifer connectivity. We are actually looking at and researching exactly the questions that this motion goes to.

I also want to put on the record the National's perspective. The Greens love a good coal seam gas notice of motion and to make a big song and dance about the National party's perspective. We have been incredibly consistent on this issue. I would like to take the Senate back to November 2011 and the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee's management of the Murray Darling Basinreport and the interim report of that particular committee on the impact of mining coal seam on the management of the Murray Darling Basin.

The report canvassed a variety of issues around this. It was a very comprehensive report which involved excursions and a lot of witnesses appearing. It went for a long period of time, and it was very ably chaired by Senator Bill Heffernan. It went to the impact of water, land access and land use et cetera, and it had a comprehensive list of recommendations, which I recommend to senators who are interested in this to have a look at.

Let's go to the additional comments—the National Party made it very clear in their additional comments to this report that we absolutely support the fact that the agricultural landowner has a very clear right of a significant return on any coal seam gas development in their area. When we go to the additional comments from the Australian Greens—let's have a look, Senator Canavan. As Senator Waters is so impassioned about landholder rights right now, let's look at when she actually signed the additional comments. Her recommendations went to (1) assessing greenhouse gas intensity; (2) to greenhouse gas accounting; and (4) to rigorous independent monitoring of greenhouse emissions. There is not one word in the recommendations from Senator Waters, about landowners and their right to veto, their right to an adequate return or the ensuring that the landholders' community, more broadly, has a right to absolutely benefit from any development in their area. No. So, three years later, during a state election campaign in New South Wales and a by-election in Victoria, we have Senator Waters making hay—or attempting to make hay—with coal seam gas issues. Unfortunately, Senator Waters as a Victorian National—

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. Senator McKenzie well knows that I have had legislation in this chamber for more than three years—

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Waters, resume your seat. There is no point of order. It is a debating point.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you so much for your protection, Mr Acting Deputy President Seselja. This is a publicly available report and, if you want any clearer indication of the people and the parties who are sticking up for rural and regional Australia and landowners, you need look no further than the 2011 November report.

I know that Senator Waters has been quite vocal in my communities in recent times, particularly down in south Gippsland, around this issue. I want to put a few facts on the record from the Victorian Nationals' perspective on this issue. It is true that it was the last state coalition government that put in place the moratorium on coal seam gas development in Victoria. It is indeed the Victorian Leader of the National Party, Peter Walsh, who this week stated publicly that he supported the extension of the moratorium.

The Victorian Nationals will demand stronger safeguards for landholders regarding onshore coal seam gas operations should the industry ever develop in Victoria. The Nationals support landowners having the right to say no to coal seam gas extraction activity on their property. Similar to the federal National Party's position on this issue, the Victorian Nationals believe the regions where the mining takes place should also share in the benefits of the activity. The Nationals support the introduction of a landowner and community benefit structure so that, when mining activity takes place in a local community, the landowners get a share of the wealth to invest in local priorities.

When we look at the additional comments made by National Party senators to the Senate inquiry into this exact issue, recommendation 1 goes specifically to reimbursing—increasing the bargaining position of the farmer or the landholder so that they can negotiate these contracts from a position of power.

Senator Waters interjecting—

This is a state issue, Senator Waters, and you bring it in time and time again. I really encourage you to take your bills and this issue to the state parliaments. Maybe you need to be focusing on that.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. Senator Waters was heard in silence for the duration of her contribution. She has not stopped interfering since the honourable senator started. Can I ask you, please, for her to give the same respect to the senator that she got during her own contribution.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind senators that senators have a right to be heard in silence. Senator Waters, you were heard in silence.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In terms of the Victorian National Party's position on this, as the rightful, constitutionally legal, area for approving these sorts of projects, I completely back the Victorian Nationals' perspective on coal seam gas development. I think we all should be actually focusing on the fact that we need processes in place when any development takes place in communities so that consultation is appropriate and rigorous and that we include community but we also include industry and that it is based on well-evidenced research.

Too often when these sorts of issues come before us for public debate, we have emotive responses not actually driven by hard science. As a scientist, I would appreciate the Greens, in particular, not using scientists and scientific methodology willy-nilly. You are either for it or you are not. You cannot apply it to policy positions on a whim. It is all or nothing with science. You should not be hiding behind the veil of requiring scientific evidence sometimes and then conveniently using emotive arguments on the other hand to persuade the public to your very, very poor policy positions.

I have many more things to say on this, Mr Acting Deputy President, but I have an estimates committee to chair and I know there are other senators who are keen to speak, so I cede.

Nova Peris (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion on coal seam gas mining. Coal seam gas mining, or fracking, is an issue of great importance across the whole country and certainly it is of great concern to Territorians as well. The first thing to say about coal seam gas in the Territory is: what is the rush? We have massive conventional gas reserves, both onshore and offshore, that are still being explored and understood. In the Northern Territory just recently—in fact, last weekend—the Northern Territory Labor Party, with the full consent of the members, supported a moratorium on all coal seam gas and fracking activities in the Northern Territory pending an independent, science based investigation into the processes, including all climatic circumstances, and across varied geological sites.

NT Labor also supports a comprehensive, independently developed program of public education concerning all fracking and coal seam gas processes. We want to know what it is and how it could benefit Territorians as a whole. A number of local councils in the Territory, including Katherine Town Council, have made public statements against coal seam gas and fracking. This is not a Green dominated council, by any means. It simply indicates the real level of concern that people have about coal seam gas.

In the Territory, The Country Liberal government have made a real point of acting without listening to the community, and they are currently paying a heavy political price for their arrogance. The CLP are all for coal seam gas mining, regardless of what the science says or whether or not it is the right way to go. The Country Liberals cannot be trusted on this issue, particularly when they cannot even trust each other. The Country Liberals would happily sell the Territory down the drain, without even publicly discussing the issues, and all the while engaging in a potentially damaging process without any independent scientific evidence to support their decisions.

There are many questions. What will coal seam gas mining do for us? Will it give us an improved standard of living? Will our power bills be cheaper? Will we be a healthier nation? Will CSG make us richer as a nation overall? Or will it kill off the country by polluting our waterways, killing our wildlife and negatively impacting on our health and wellbeing?

I am aware that some Aboriginal groups in the Northern Territory are interested in exploring the benefits of coal seam gas as a possible option for their future economic development. I acknowledge this and I accept it. I would say to my country men and women: let us first understand what it is, what it would do for the community and what impact it would have on country and our nation as a whole. We need to understand the potential long-term effects and impacts that fracking and coal seam gas mining will have and we need to make sure we are happy with our understanding before we move any further ahead. We must all remember: our country, our land, is our greatest cultural as well as economic asset.

Today we have seen the Intergenerational report released by the government. It contains a great number of challenges for Australia. But the biggest challenge as far as I am concerned is the condition of this country as we pass it to our children and our grandchildren. Most of all, I want my grandchildren to grow up in an Australia that prides itself on taking care of its citizens and taking care of our precious environment, not just rushing headlong into important and potentially environmentally damaging decisions like fracking and coal seam gas without proper scientific evidence to support our decisions. Let's have a proper process and get the evidence, good and bad, on the table and have a decent and honest discussion with the nation.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to rise on this topic. I suppose one of the good things about being new here is that you do not know what is going on half the time, and I got caught short there a little bit, getting called up. Another is that it was not that long ago that I was out in the real world, so to speak, and involved in real-world issues rather than just talking about real-world issues. Just before I came to the Senate, I worked for a beef company, and in that beef company we actually negotiated coal seam gas licences and we were negotiating with a coal seam gas company about some water use. I want to just say a little bit about my experiences doing that, because a lot of this debate is driven by things that come second or third hand to people. We cannot really understand what people's experiences are. Both in that role—in a business role—and in this role in the Senate, I have been to see both the coal seam gas companies and farmers impacted by coal seam gas, but we cannot put ourselves in people's shoes.

My experience with the coal seam gas industry is not a completely positive one, but it is not a completely negative one either. First of all, there are, of course, protections in the laws of Queensland—and all states—that regulate the coal seam gas industry. The industry has obligations to make good and to try to come to an agreement with landowners before they operate. In this case, an agreement was made between the beef company and the coal seam gas company for 24 wells. While it was not an outcome that was particularly attractive to the beef company, it was done on a voluntary basis.

I have to say that the most difficult thing in negotiating on these issues is the pure imbalance that exists between the rights of landowners and the rights of the coal seam gas companies. That is what makes it difficult in this environment. If it were simply a business deal where you negotiate an agreement to sell oranges or buy apples, you could see a situation where people walk away with mutual benefit. When you come to most business deals, unless you have mutual benefit, you will walk away from the table and there will be no deal. But in this case you do not have that situation, because, at least in Queensland, the law prescribes that if you do not reach an agreement after 40 business days—sorry, I think it was increased to 50 business days in the last few years—you have to let the company on your land, and a court will determine what the rate of compensation would be.

Earlier in the debate, Senator Williams mentioned that both AGL, which I think he mentioned, and Santos have assured him that they will not go onto people's lands without their approval, and that is what they tell me too, but the reality is that, when a farmer or landowner sits down and thinks, 'Should I take this to court and oppose this coming onto my property?' they do not have a lot of leverage, because the clock is ticking: after 50 business days, they get to come on the land. So normally it is in the landowners' best interests to reach an agreement within that 50-day window so they do not have to go to court and pay legal fees and they can get something rather than maybe nothing.

That imbalance makes it difficult. It tilts the balance towards those that want to extract gas and against those that may have other priorities and issues. I think a lot of the heat and issues that exist in this debate could be resolved if we simply gave landowners more of a say on what happens on their land. We on this side of politics believe in private property rights. We believe that people should have a say in what happens to the property that they own. In this instance, there are people who have bought land and maybe passed that down through generations. They should have a right to have a decent say about what happens on their property. That right is not inviolable. It is not a fundamental human right in the sense that it cannot ever be abrogated by the state. Even if you live in the city, sometimes you might have to sell your house if the government wants to put a road through it. Sometimes there is a public good where you have to have your property compulsorily acquired, but that should be the exception, and there should be exceptional circumstances when it happens. I am not quite sure these circumstances exist in this case.

As Senator Williams said earlier, we actually had a system in this country where the mineral rights were owned by the landowners. A lot of people on the other side of the debate will say it is a state resource; the state owns it, and the state should have the right to regulate it and benefit from it. That has actually not always been the case. It has been the case for a much shorter time than people realise. In the case of New South Wales, it was actually Neville Wran that took landowners' rights away from them in the Coal Acquisition Act 1981. That is about the same time I was born. The Coal Acquisition Act 1981 took the rights to own the coal, to say what happened to that coal and to benefit from that coal away from farmers and landowners and vested them in the state to sell to mining companies and to extract royalties from. That decision happened with no compensation to landowners—none at all. It was simply a bill of parliament. Later on, the Greiner government was elected, and it instituted a process to give some compensation to landowners, because it was a huge issue in regional New South Wales, as you can imagine.

In Queensland it happened a lot earlier: it happened in 1915. I cannot remember the name of the act, but I remember getting it from the Queensland parliament. It was a two-page act, and it basically just said that all petroleum and gas previously vested in private hands is now vested in the Crown. That was it—done. Those rights were taken away from them with no compensation and no remuneration. We are nearly 100 years on from that. I suppose this year we are 100 years on from that act in Queensland, so we have had a century of government ownership and control over petroleum and gas resources. I recognise that we are not going to go back to the pre-1915 situation, where landowners actually owned the petroleum and gas. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed, but I do think we can rebalance the rights that exist, and I do think that would help this issue.

And why do I think that? It is because we have very similar issues here in coal seam gas to those that exist in the shale gas industry in the United States. Sometimes they are conflated. They are actually different technologies and access different parts of the watertable, but they have very similar issues, and they are very different from typical mining operations.

Underground or open cut coal mining will typically come in and buy the properties that are directly affected. They will just buy them up, and the people that get bought out usually laugh all the way to the bank. I know the former member for New England sold some of his property to Whitehaven Coal and made a substantial profit of probably three times, some reports suggest, the average market value for that land at the time that was going. That is a great deal if you can get it, and fantastic for those people.

But coal seam gas and shale gas are very different because the companies do not buy the land. They just want an easement or an access to the land to drill some wells and maintain 24/7 access to the property for safety and for their industrial needs. That means that there has to be an ongoing relationship between the company and the landowner. That creates tension, and that creates issues. There is no one-off transaction. It is difficult for a coal seam gas company or a shale gas company to pay royalties to the state and overcompensate the landowners because they deal with hundreds of landowners not just a few. We have a situation where it is hard to take the politics out of this issue. It is hard to resolve the appropriate property rights of landowners and our desire to develop our resources and create jobs in regional areas.

In the United States, they have a very different system. In most states in the United States the farmers still own the gas. They still own the shale gas. They still own the oil. They are developing their industry at a great speed, and much faster than us. They are restarting and rebooting their economy, based on cheap energy and large scales of cheap gas that are close to their areas of industrial development. That the US is now back on track, so to speak, is a great thing for the world economy because it is helping prop us all up at the moment. Their unemployment rate is lower than ours now, and their economic growth is high.

A lot of that is to do with the fact that they have cheap gas and cheap power and they are developing. I do not think we should be surprised that, when we allow people to make money from something, they will sign up. When we allow people to negotiate a good price for access to their land, they will sign up and they will develop their property. It is something that should be at the core, on this side of politics, of what we believe in. We believe in that. We believe that, through the private negotiation of rights and services and provision of goods, we will have more wealth created in the economy, and that is what is happening in the United States.

A couple of years ago I was talking to an Australian BHP executive. BHP have a lot of shale gas licences in the United States. He was in a suburb of Louisiana where there was a shale gas hub terminal in the middle of the suburb with houses all around, just like a suburb in Australia. All these pipes were going under houses, and, of course, as an Australian, he said to the Yanks, 'Well, how did you achieve this? If we'd tried this in Australia we'd have no hope.' The Americans said, 'Well, actually, the suburb next door is not happy with us because the gas price has fallen and we're not gonna go in to that suburb now.'

All those houses around that area, all those moms and dads in suburban homes, not farms, were getting a cheque. They were getting a cheque from the gas company because they owned the gas under their house. It was just a backyard with a clothes line and normal barbecue out the back. They own the gas under their land, so they have the right to get a cheque from it. They all supported it, and that is boosting their economy now. But we do not have that situation here.

We have a system where the state owns the gas. It is a communist outcome. It is a communist situation where the state owns the resource. It is a national resource, and it is exactly what the Labor Party like. It is not what we want; it is what they want. They want a communist outcome. And what are we getting? We are getting a communist solution to a communist situation. We are getting no production. We are getting lines of industrial companies, like breadlines in the Soviet Union, waiting and lining up for gas because we cannot get cheap gas for our industry. We should not be surprised. It did not work in Russia, guys. It does not work in Korea. It does not work in Cuba, and it does not work in our gas industry here in Australia, surprise, surprise.

I do applaud the Greens. Normally I associate the Greens with communism.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Steady!

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Senator O'Sullivan. It is the second time this week I have given some credit to the Greens. You will have to watch me. I think they typically like the communist outcomes where the state owns the means of production and we all regulate what people do and say and earn in our lives.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are in the National Party, remember.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that is right, and sometimes we are a little bit socialist too, Senator Carr, that is true—sometimes, but not in this situation. I applaud the Greens because they are calling for more rights for landowners, and I think that is a good thing, and so do the Victorian Nationals as well. They have adopted a policy since the state election of ensuring that landowners have the right to say no to coal seam gas extraction on their property, and I applaud that. It is a good policy. It is something we should see more around the country, and I will put on record that I support that.

What I do not support in coming to this particular motion we are debating today is in section (b) of that motion, which calls on the government to do certain things, and presumably that means the Commonwealth government. I think we should act with great caution and trepidation in making laws in this place to cover the whole country on an issue which is well within, and very clearly defined within, the remit of the state government under our Constitution. They are tackling a very difficult issue. It is a wicked issue. It is hard to balance the needs of the state government for revenue and royalties, the regional areas for development and, obviously, the landowners for their property rights.

We certainly do not have a mortgage in this place on good policy. I think we have seen many examples in the last decade where the Commonwealth government has tried to come in and say, 'We know the best way. We know what we should do,' and we have ended up creating a lot more problems than were there to start with. There is plenty of opportunity for state governments and state politicians and state election campaigns to deal with these issues, and if there are members of the Senate here that feel so passionately about this issue, they should have gotten elected to a state parliament. They should have stood for a state parliament in a state seat and be progressing those issues in the appropriate place.

That does not stop us, of course, from expressing support or opposition to certain state policies, as I have done here today, but it should be the responsibility of the Commonwealth executive government to deal with this. I particularly think the Commonwealth government could potentially have a role in establishing a royal commission, which is item (b)(ii).

I did listen to Senator Lazarus's contribution earlier and, while I am, like Senator Williams, very concerned about some of the evidence he produced, I have been to these areas—to Tara, to Miles and to Chinchilla—and I am not sure that the evidence is quite there yet to support a royal commission into these issues. We had a Senate inquiry only a few years ago—Senator McKenzie mentioned that earlier. While some of that evidence was also presented to that committee we did not make a recommendation for a royal commission. Most of the recommendations from that report dealt particularly with environmental issues that arise with this industry and made sure that the Commonwealth government had appropriate regulatory and oversight arrangements in place to deal with those issues. I thought those recommendations were largely on the mark. While they were not adopted in specific form by the then Labor-Greens government, they did lead to the establishment of the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and a water trigger under the EPBC Act.

So, that has led to greater oversight for the environmental concerns. As Senator McKenzie said before, no party actually called for a complete blanket ban on coal seam gas in that inquiry, including the Greens, who wrote additional comments. The National Party also made some additional comments through Senator Fiona Nash and then Senator Barnaby Joyce—they were the only party to actually recommend that greater returns go back to the landowners. The recommendation they made said that maybe one per cent should go back from the wellhead revenue to landowners. That was a very moderate recommendation.

We have looked into this issue. The Commonwealth government has increased its regulations. It has a system set up now for additional research and evaluation of coal seam gas applications. I do not actually think that since then—since we established the water trigger—that any coal seam gas extraction projects have been approved. I might be wrong on that, but I do not believe so. We have three projects approved in Queensland and I believe all of those were done in late 2010, before the water trigger came into place. There is another project seeking approval at the moment in the Scenic Rim area of Queensland, but it has not been approved, and there are some others in New South Wales as well. So I do not see the need at this stage for any larger consideration of this issue by the Commonwealth government. It seems that we have increased our oversight and regulation.

It is appropriate that while I have spent my time mainly talking on the issues for landowners and property rights—as you would expect me to do as a National Party senator—I do not shy away from the fact that there are very large environmental issues here. The water resource is a public good and we have a public responsibility to ensure that it is not damaged. That is why we have the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and that is why the state governments have their own environmental laws.

I just want to finish on the point that sometimes I feel that the Greens are great supporters of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act—it is supported by all parties in this Senate—but that often they do not want to support the decisions of the umpire under that act. It is one thing to support the provisions of the act but when a decision comes under that act—like to approve coal seam gas projects or to approve projects in the Galilee Basin—that does not agree with what they like then they want to take it to the courts and disagree with it. If you want to pick an umpire—if you want to play a game of footy and you pick someone to decide on the rules—you do not then disagree with the decisions that are made because of those rules.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We didn't pick—

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have passed this law; and the law delegates responsibility to the minister, Senator Waters, and the Greens signed up to that. The Greens have signed up to that—they have signed up to the minister having the responsibility to make those—

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. we didn't!

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But you have not opposed it—you have amended it many times, Senator Waters, but the minister has the responsibility. You voted for the water trigger, and the water trigger creates the ministerial delegation of power to do that. We should support the umpire in this case. There is a ream of environmental regulation and oversight that occurs in this country. These projects go through enormous amounts of checks and balances before they are approved, and we are very lucky to live in a country like that.

As I said, I do not believe there is a need for any greater action from the Commonwealth government at this stage, but I do support efforts at a state level to give more property rights to landowners.

John Madigan (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened with interest to some of the prior contributions, and I acknowledge Senator Canavan's concern for the rights of landowners and farmers.

This is a complicated debate because, as much as our farmers and our landowners should get something out of it, it can affect their neighbours—their amenity of life and their land. And it could possibly have an effect on our water table and our land—our prime agricultural land—if we do not get it right.

Personally, I support this motion because I believe that when it comes to coal seam gas all the facts need to be put on the table, transparently, so people can have an educated, factual position. We should not be putting our people and our prime agricultural land potentially at risk before we have thoroughly investigated all the possible impacts of coal seam gas mining on human health, our water table and our finite precious agricultural land.

We have a duty of care to err on the side of caution until we know that the practice that is being employed is safe. As I said, we have a duty of care to those who could be affected socially, economically or environmentally. Personally, I have nothing against investigating new sources of energy, and if coal seam gas mining is as safe and efficient as its proponents would have us believe then they should have nothing to fear from a royal commission.

I note that Manufacturing Australia have been visiting the parliament this morning and speaking to many senators and members of the House of Representatives about the positive contribution that Australian manufacturing makes to our country—socially, economically and environmentally—and the need to have affordable gas to give our domestic consumers—the mums and dads and pensioners, and also our food producers and our engineering manufacturers—the opportunity to compete on the world market. They mentioned coal seam gas and shale gas et cetera and how that is being utilised in the US to bring manufacturing back onshore and to bring prosperity for the American people and their economy. In fact, I believe it is in the best interest that coal seam gas mining be thoroughly investigated so that we can prove that it is either safe or not safe— (Time expired)