Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice she asked today relating to a fact sheet produced by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

This fact sheet is just another example of the fossil fuel industries trying to buy their social licence and coercing communities in order to prop up what is a dying industry. We know that the fossil fuel industries have well and truly infiltrated the major parties; that's no secret. What is the most disappointing is seeing this extend to our national peak scientific body.

Minister Wong referred to them as an essential piece of infrastructure—a pillar, in fact. If that is so, then maybe it's time this government committed to giving adequate funding to CSIRO, restoring what was cut under the previous government and taking us to a space where CSIRO would not have to take a page out of the major parties' playbook and accept money from fossil fuel companies. Currently, Australia has the lowest investment in research and development in comparison to other OECD countries. I hope to see in tonight's budget that this investment increases and that the new government takes this seriously. The Greens have a policy to increase that to four per cent of the GDP, under our science portfolio.

The fact of the matter is that this fact sheet was created to fulfil a recommendation about a fracking inquiry. The intention was to ensure that First Nations communities were made aware of the risks associated with fracking, to extend respect, to make sure that the voices of First Nations people and their ability to uphold their sovereignty, their rights and their responsibilities of caring for country were able to be heard—making sure that they had all the information that was available to them.

First Nations communities deserve better. We need and demand that accurate information is not funded by companies that want to come onto their land and destroy it. We have to talk about free, prior and informed consent because that shapes what is happening in this country when we talk about manufacturing consent. A lack of respect has been shown in the passage that's been provided through CSIRO. The fact sheets do provide misleading and, in fact, false information to First Nations communities. This is why we need to pass Senator Thorpe's private senator's bill in relation to UNDRIP and it needs to be a priority.

This fact sheet we speak of says that natural gas development from shale can have some impacts on the environment, so fracking in the Beetaloo basin alone is allowed to continue. One field could cause up to 117 million tonnes of CO2 and this alone will blow Labor's target of 43 per cent emissions reduction out of the water, not to mention the massive amounts of water used for fracking. The fact sheet states that fracking uses 99 litres of water for every one litre of chemicals and that each well can use eight community swimming pools of water. That alone is phenomenal.

In its submission to the Senate inquiry on oil and gas exploration and production in the Beetaloo basin, Rallen Australia stated that Sweetpea actually propose to drill 10 horizontal wells into each well pad and they propose to frack each of these horizontal wells 40 times. Each fracking requires an average of 28 megalitres of water, which is equivalent to 10 Olympic swimming pools. Sweetpea intends to use 28 megalitres. Times that for 40 fracks and 10 wells and that equals about 11.2 billion litres of fresh water into each well pad. This is almost a quarter of the entire surface water used in the Northern Territory in one year. That's just for one Sweetpea well pad. There are 27 of these pads planned on this property alone.

The issue with water use and fracking cannot be understated, particularly when we are talking about the Northern Territory and the impact on northern Australia of climate change. This government has a long way to go in taking substantial climate action required and in committing to: no new coal and gas; adequately funding the science industry so our peak national science agency does have to take money from gas companies, which could compromise its independence; and listen to the voices of First Nations people in relation to free, prior and informed consent for activities that occur on their country.

Question agreed to.