Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in favour of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Expanding the Water Trigger) Bill 2023. This bill will expand the water trigger in our environment laws to ensure all proposed unconventional gas projects are assessed for their impacts on critical water resources. Water is life. Our rivers and waterways are critical for the survival of our ecosystems, culture and communities. Yet a loophole in our environment laws means fracking corporations have a licence to drill without regard for our rivers or the voices of traditional owners. Currently, the Minister for the Environment and Water is only required to assess proposed coal seam gas projects for their water impact, while hydraulic fracturing projects remain exempt from this requirement, despite their significant water impact. This does not make sense. This bill seeks to fix this failure of our environment laws and provide stronger protection for Australia's rivers, aquifers, wetlands and the communities that rely upon them.

The Albanese government has already made its commitment to an expanded water trigger clear in its Nature Positive Plan. However, if stalled beyond this year, this promise will be too little, too late. This reform is urgent. Current projects that are soon to be given approval without considering the impact on water will go ahead unless we fix this loophole. The Albanese government did, of course, promise to do this by the end of this calendar year. Where is this reform? In the Northern Territory, fracking companies are on the precipice of large-scale gas extraction. Fracking projects in the Beetaloo Basin are expected to receive first gas production approvals imminently. This is why this reform is urgent. Unless the water trigger is extended, there is no requirement for federal assessment and approval when changing from an exploration to a production licence. This is clearly a loophole that needs to be fixed. Last week the NT government released their Georgina Wiso Water Allocation Plan, which proposes to give billions of litres of water to fracking and cotton companies. Scientists and water experts have sounded the alarm about what is a completely unsustainable and frankly dangerous allocation of water. The plan was prepared without an advisory committee, in breach of the National Water Initiative. The proposed extraction could stop the Roper River flowing and endanger the Northern Territory aquifers, billabongs and sacred sites.

The NT government is acting completely recklessly, sacrificing the environment and culture to pave way for fracking. The complete lack of concern for preserving the NT's critical water resources is alarming. We are in 2023. It's time we consider the impacts of these types of projects on precious resources like water. Fracking uses enormous volumes of water and puts groundwater and surface water at risk of contamination. Without impact assessment, water resources may be limitlessly exploited and irreversibly damaged for projects that do nothing but put our climate at further risk. For every gas well, fracking companies require millions of litres of groundwater, which the NT government is willing to give them now. An expanded water trigger in our federal environment laws will provide an urgently needed layer of protection for NT water and waterways by ensuring rigorous assessment of potential impacts to waterways. The federal government must show leadership and step in to stop this dangerous overextraction before irreversible damage is done to the climate and to our river systems and waterways.

Contamination of water as a result of fracking is also a critical concern for communities throughout the region. Even in the exploration phase, we have already seen fracking corporations acting like cowboys, with simply no regard for the water and how they handle it. Tamboran Resources barely received a slap on the wrist for spraying toxic wastewater all over their site. Communities and workers alike have expressed concerns about how this action could have poisoned waterways, ecosystems and ultimately the health of communities in the region. There needs to be a better system of accountability and responsibility. Fracking the Beetaloo will have not only an immediate impact on the NT environment but ongoing impacts that will be felt long into the future. This climate bomb could increase emissions by up to 117 million tonnes a year. That's 25 per cent of Australia's annual emissions.

As the climate crisis worsens, we need to be doing everything we can to protect our environment. This means not only protecting what water we still have but properly regulating polluting industries that make the climate crisis worse. They cannot be allowed to freely exploit a resource that is absolutely critical to human survival. Already the impacts of climate change are being felt within the NT and, of course, across the rest of the country, with visible impacts on water resources in this generation.

I want to thank the delegation of traditional owners who visited parliament earlier this year to tell us about the impacts of fracking on their country. I want to quote what they told me. They said:

We know this planned gas fracking will make climate change worse. We know if this fracking goes ahead we may not be able to live on country like we have for thousands and thousands of years. We need your help to keep our culture, our water, our climate and our children's futures safe.

Our water, our land and our climate is all linked. If we wait any longer to implement an expanded water trigger, fracking could result in irreversible overextraction of water, compounded by worsening climate impacts in the region.

Commitments have been made to expand the water trigger over and over again. It is time we get this done. The Albanese government committed to it both at the election and in their Nature Positive Plan. The NT government committed to it through the implementation of all recommendations of the NT fracking inquiry conducted by Justice Pepper. The Senate inquiry into the Beetaloo basin, in its majority report, recommended its implementation by 31 December 2023. That is a little more than a month away from today. Despite these commitments and these promises, the NT government have lifted their moratorium on fracking, and the water trigger is still not in place. With broad support across this parliament, we must urgently act to pass this bill and implement an expanded water trigger before commercial fracking gets the green light and irreversible damage is done. Now, more than ever, we need to listen to First Nations voices when it comes to protecting our environment. This bill is an opportunity to protect our rivers, aquifers and wetlands and the communities and culture they sustain.

With the government already committed to this reform, now laid out in this bill before the Senate, there is nothing to stand in the way of the implementation of an expanded water trigger by the end of this year. The ball is now in the government 's court. We hope to be able to work cooperatively across this chamber to get this reform done before mistakes are made and before damage is done that cannot and will not be reversible. I urge the Senate to pass this bill.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's much to unpack in relation to this bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Expanding the Water Trigger) Bill 2023 [No. 2]. The first thing to say is that its introduction is yet another legacy of the vacuum created by the Labor Party as a result of their shambolic inability to make changes to Australia's national environmental laws. When the Greens announced on 16 October this year that they would introduce this bill they also released an important letter from Senator Hanson-Young to the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek. It was a letter I took great delight in reading, and so did the rest of Australia. The content of that letter, dated 13 October 2023, confirmed what the coalition had been saying for months, which was that Ms Plibersek's multiple promises to finalise new national environmental laws by the end of this year, 2023, had gone up in smoke. They were just more broken promises. We now know from the admissions of senior officials from her department that even the process of drafting those laws is still many months away. There's a very real possibility that they may not even pass through the parliament before the time of the next federal election.

Extraordinarily, all of this has still never been openly conceded by Ms Plibersek, who laughably claimed just a few weeks ago that the process was running two full months ahead of schedule—an unbelievable claim to make. The major delays under her watch and her woeful performance as minister are already having many far-reaching flow-on effects. One of those is that disillusionment and frustration are rising amongst those Australians who are interested in seeing well-balanced environmental and economic outcomes achieved across our country under the laws that govern them. Another is that the ALP are creating substantial uncertainty about how and whether they will even address the many individual elements of Australia's environmental laws that need to be urgently tackled. There's general agreement that the application of the water trigger is one of those.

Since it was included in the EPBC Act, at the instigation of the then member for New England, Tony Windsor MP, during the years of the Rudd-Gillard governments, a range of problems and concerns have arisen in relation to the application and workability of the trigger. In turn, there remain a very wide variety of views about the trigger and how it should or should not be used into the future. Against this background, it's very concerning that the government, last year, snuck some wording into its so-called and elusive Nature Positive Plan that indicated it is looking at increasing federal power over states and territories in this field of policy, including by expanding the remit of the existing water trigger to all forms of unconventional gas. In the coalition, we are particularly concerned about exactly what changes Labor might make to the water trigger under Ms Plibersek, especially if they entail some sort of expansion. Time and time again during her period as environment minister we've seen her adopt an ideological stance rather than one that's based on consultation and serious, science based evidence. More to the point, we've seen her succumb over and over again to environmental activism without adequately considering the often calamitous economic and social ramifications of her actions.

Across our time in government, the coalition did not support the trigger's application to unconventional forms of gas, and that remains our position. Moreover, it's our belief that less federal intervention and an increased role for the states and territories in this area, and accordingly reduced duplication across different levels of government, will be likely to promote more informed local knowledge and deliver much better results. We don't share the view of the Greens and teals—or Labor, for that matter—that federal expansion here is a good thing. The more the federal water trigger is extended, the more unwieldy and ineffective this area of policy will almost inevitably become.

That said, we can understand why anyone would be tempted to suggest amendments to the individual elements of the EPBC Act at the moment. In the absence of any leadership, hard work or semblance of delivery or achievement from the environment minister, it's not unreasonable for others to try and step in by nominating ad hoc fixes as one option in trying to overcome Labor's utter malaise in this area, and that's exactly what the Greens are trying to do here. Nonetheless, this bill embodies a policy approach that is the opposite to the one that the coalition supports.

We might add that, particularly from their public statements, a number of members of the Greens and teals also seem to be labouring under some fairly significant misunderstandings and misapprehensions of the issues at the core of the bill. The member for Warringah, for example, said on 16 October this year:

… to … expand the definition of the water trigger to cover all forms of unconventional gas … is consistent with the expert advice from … the Samuel review.

It's really not clear how anyone could have seriously formed that view. Indeed, the Samuel review consistently made the point that the Commonwealth's role in this area should be reduced rather than increased. Moreover, it concluded that it is plainly the states and territories that are better vested with these responsibilities. Recommendation 1 of that review, for instance, said quite clearly, 'Matters of national environmental significance should be focused on Commonwealth responsibilities for the environment,' and that the water matter of national environmental significance in sections 24D and 24E should be confined 'only to cross-border water resources'. Likewise, recommendation 18 said:

… Commonwealth assessment pathways should be rationalised to enable a risk-based approach to assessments that is proportionate to the level of impact on matters protected by the EPBC Act.

The review's final report also said:

Many of the suggestions about the Commonwealth taking on a broader role reflect a lack of trust that States and Territories will manage these elements well. The Review does not agree with suggestions that the environmental matters the EPBC Act deals with should be broadened. The remit of the Act should not be expanded to cover environmental matters that are State and Territory responsibilities. To do so would result in muddled responsibilities, further duplication and inefficiency. Unclear responsibilities mean that the community is less able to hold governments to account.

That would be a bad outcome.

The report also noted:

The States and Territories have constitutional responsibility for managing their water resources. This responsibility is reflected in the National Water Initiative, which is the intergovernmental agreement that sets out the respective roles of jurisdictions in water management and the water reform agenda they have collectively agreed to pursue.

Likewise, it stressed:

Direct or indirect changes to water resources that have a potential to impact protected matters have always triggered the EPBC Act and should continue to do so.

The Samuel review also found:

To reduce the complexity of the regulatory process, the pathways for assessing proposals should be rationalised—

rather than, as is the basic proposition behind this bill, widened. The Samuel review also said:

Reducing duplication in development assessment and approval is a sound ambition, and one that governments should continue to pursue. The Review recommends that the EPBC Act should enable the Commonwealth Government to recognise and accredit the regulatory processes and environmental management activities of other parties, including States and Territories and other Commonwealth agencies. This would streamline decision-making by removing the obligation for a project to be assessed under multiple environmental assessment laws.

It should be added that at the federal level the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development has already been in existence for over a decade, specifically in order to independently advise government regulators on the impacts that coal seam gas and large coalmining development may have on Australia's water resources. That is its very function, and it receives significant federal government support to undertake this work.

Given all that history and context, and in keeping with the coalition's consistent and longstanding approach on this issue of the possible expansion of the water trigger, we won't be supporting this bill. The very conception of the bill suggests that the Greens, the teals and probably the ALP will continue to try to imagine a way to land a solution that's actually illusory, impossible and unworkable, and this will continue to cause many people no end of problems in the process. By contrast, the coalition will continue to advocate for measured and commonsense solutions that actually work and that sensibly balance environmental and economic priorities for Australia.

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government welcome the Greens party introducing this bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Expanding the Water Trigger) Bill 2023 [No. 2], we understand the reasoning behind the private senator's bill and we commend Senator Hanson-Young for focusing on this important issue. The government have already committed to legislating the water trigger as part of our broader commitment to reform our environmental law. We're committed to extending the protections under Australia's environmental law to coal seam gas and other types of unconventional gas. That would include shale and tight gas, which are the ones that I believe Senator Hanson-Young is most concerned about because, due to the passage of time, they sit outside of the laws that we all know are broken. When the laws were first developed, these forms of gas were not included.

The government have made their own commitments on this topic over many years, and we are delivering on those commitments under the strong new environmental laws to deliver a nature positive environment. The laws we have currently are highly process driven, they're cumbersome and they're difficult to work with. It's difficult to find anyone who thinks that they work for them—not the environmentalists, not business, not developers. They just don't work, and we've known this for a considerable time. Unfortunately, our colleagues in the Liberal and National parties chose not to do anything to address that when they were in government.

These processes slow down decision-making and put people through an awful lot of hoops. And I'm not averse to a hoop if I think it's a useful one; I'm not averse to a lengthy, hard process if that's going to protect our environment. But we know that that's not necessary. There are many ways to improve this system to better protect the environment, which our laws don't appropriately do now, and better ways to ensure that people who are thinking of undertaking a development, be that a housing project or whatever across the entire spectrum, can work out early in the process whether the project's got legs. We can work out early in the process whether the development that's proposed is going to seriously destroy the environment, in which case it will not go ahead. The strengthening of these laws is critical—it is absolutely critical—to protecting our environment.

As much as these laws are not supported by anyone and they've been in place for a very long time, the new legislation, which is complex and is undergoing significant amounts of consultation, will be built on three basic principles: clear national standards of environmental protection, improving and speeding up decisions and restoring trust and integrity in the system. Our plan is that we will, hopefully, halt the decline in our natural environment and actually start to repair it.

Our Nature Positive Plan will provide stronger laws designed to repair nature. It will protect plants, animals, native species, endangered species and critical ecological environments. It will develop a new environmental protection agency, and they will help make those decisions, those important development decisions, early in the piece to stop unviable projects going ahead—unviable in terms of how they impact our environment.

There will be more certainty for business. They will save time. They will save money. There will be faster and clearer decisions. That is the right thing to do for business. It is right to tell them upfront that their project can't go ahead because of its impact on the environment. It saves them time and money, and it saves everyone a lot of grief. The environmentalists will then have a clearer pathway to see what is going to go ahead—what projects are really just flying a kite and aren't going to progress, and those that actually are going to progress.

The EPBC Act has to be reviewed every five years, and the last couple of reviews have turned out some pretty damning results. The most recent one, which was done in 2019 by Professor Graeme Samuel, found that our laws don't protect the environment and that they do not work for business either. They are unwieldly and costly laws, they are time-consuming for business, they don't provide certainty and they've led to widespread distrust in the system. Professor Samuel got to a consensus point between business groups and environmentalists in his review. He made a series of recommendations that are linked together and considered the full spectrum of people interested in this arena and in the full spectrum of what developments are required and what environmental protections are critically essential. To understand the Samuel review and look at the State of the environment report is to be deeply concerned about the state of our environment and deeply concerned about how it's going to progress over the coming years. There's a conflation of so many different issues, and we are seeing their hard impact on our environment.

I understand the concerns of Senator Hanson-Young, particularly in relation to any potential unconventional gas developments in the Northern Territory that stem from the Beetaloo potential projects, the Beetaloo inquiry and the extensive work that Senator Hanson-Young has done on this issue. We have offered the services of the Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development to the Northern Territory government to assist them in assessment that may be required for any gas projects seeking their approval. This is the committee that will actually do the work once the expanded water trigger is legislated under the laws that the government is revising for the EPBC Act. That is exactly the process that will be followed, so, in the interim while we are finalising the legislation, we have offered that committee to do work for the Northern Territory government to ensure that those assessments are done in line with how we regulate other forms of gas.

We know that the environment is in bad shape and is getting worse. We as a government know that we are revising those laws. We hear from some people that we're not going fast enough. I appreciate that, but it is really complex. There are a lot of views to take into consideration, and it is a very unwieldy piece of legislation. We are going as fast as we can, but we are in bad shape, and let's not forget that. We need to protect our environment. We need to do everything we can to protect our environment for the long term because that report found that Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent, and for the first time Australia has more foreign plant species than we have native. A habitat the size of Tasmania has been cleared, and plastics are choking oceans—up to 80,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre, which is deeply alarming.

It's not surprising that we have done so badly, given we had 10 years of neglect and mismanagement by the Liberal-National government. They axed the climate change laws. Imagine where we'd be if we'd had 10 years of climate laws acting in this country. Imagine how much better a situation we would be in now. They ignored the Samuel review into environmental laws—twice they ignored the review. They sabotaged the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and are continuing to do that as we speak. They promised $40 million for Indigenous water but didn't deliver a penny and didn't deliver a drop. They set recycling targets—

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We'll see how well you go.

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, we look forward to that. Thank you for your interjection, Senator Ruston. They set recycling targets with no plan to actually deliver them, cut highly protected areas of marine parks and cut funding to the environment department by 40 per cent. So it's not really surprising that we're in the situation that we're in now. Ten years of abject failure, and now it's our generation and the generations coming behind us—it's our children; it's our grandchildren—who are going to have to suffer for that neglect.

Thank you again, Senator Hanson-Young, for putting forward this bill. We have the same provisions being introduced into the EPBC reforms that we'll be bringing forward. We look forward to those finding a happy pathway through this chamber.

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

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Expanding the Water Trigger) Bill 2023 [No. 2]. As an environmental lawyer, I feel very strongly about this issue and I'm speaking in strong support of this bill that my colleague Senator Hanson-Young has brought to the chamber today. I must say it's somewhat reminiscent of a decade ago, when we were here having precisely this same debate. If you'll indulge me, I'll give a little history lesson.

The EPBC Act was brought in by the Howard government. That probably tells you all you need to know about whether it actually protects the environment. Sadly, all indicators are that our environment is in terminal decline, and these laws are part of the problem. They never had a water trigger when they were introduced. They still don't have a climate trigger. They still allow the minister to tick off on any damage he or she likes. There is no fetter on ministerial discretion to approve projects, even if they would send a species to extinction or completely trash a World Heritage area. There is no preclusion on what the minister is allowed to tick off on. There is no protection for critical habitat, no consideration of cumulative impacts. Honestly, these laws are absolutely terrible. When they were first introduced, passed and took effect, in 1999, they were really bad, and they have remained substandard ever since.

In 2011, when I was in this place and Independent member Mr Tony Windsor MP was in the other place, when the coal seam gas companies were first trying to get their claws into our aquifers and to pollute our climate for their own private profit, Mr Windsor and the then Greens leader, Bob Brown, and I got together and had a chat about how our environmental laws really should consider water impacts and how, with these massive coal seam gas projects and large coalmines rapaciously spreading across the country with no regard for damage to groundwater, aquifers and surface water and certainly no regard for the climate, there needed to be some federal oversight of that impact on water.

Mr Windsor introduced a bill into the House, and I introduced a bill into this place, in November 2011 that said that, yes, the federal government should consider the water impacts of coal seam gas and large coalmines. We knew at the time, and we know even more now, the serious threat that unconventional gas, including coal seam gas, presents to aquifers. They punch holes through aquifers to get to coal seams to extract the gas. They say they've sealed these holes, but actually, in a Senate inquiry that I participated in at the very start of my term, in July 2011, we heard about leaking gas from some of these pipelines. We heard really damaging evidence that suggested that the sealant on these aquifer punctures actually doesn't last and that, essentially, the risk of contamination of aquifers was very real. So there was not only the leaking of gas but also the cross-contamination with fracking fluids in aquifers—essentially the threat to poison our water supply.

That's why the Greens and Mr Windsor at the time moved to add water to our environmental laws, because it's not such a great idea to poison your water supply, is it? It's not such a great idea for agricultural productivity or for nature or for continued existence. Of course, the big parties in this place opposed that. They didn't want a water trigger. They didn't think it was their responsibility. They thought that the states were doing a you-beaut job. No worries, mate. Go back to sleep. Thankfully, 18 months later, the then Labor government changed their mind and introduced the water trigger. The Greens supported that and said: 'Great. Sorry it took you 18 months. You could have just agreed when we first proposed it, but thanks for coming to the party.' But, at the time, it didn't include unconventional gas. They left out shale gas and tight gas. That meant that WA, where they don't have coal seam gas but have shale gas, was completely unprotected and that these voracious companies, many of which are trying to savage the Canning Basin in the north of WA, didn't have to think about the water impacts of their gas extraction activities. Likewise, in the Northern Territory, which, of course, is now being savaged by Tamboran Resources and others that want to frack the Beetaloo basin, no, they didn't deserve to have their water protected. It was a very east-coast-centric approach that was taken in 2013 by the then Labor government.

The Greens moved amendments. I checked last night; it was on 17 June 2013 that the Greens moved amendments to add shale and tight gas to the water trigger to protect water in WA and the Northern Territory, because there is no scientific difference in the threat and the damage to aquifers from coal seam gas and shale and tight gas extraction. All unconventional gas extraction has the same risk to aquifers—and, I might add, it has the same risk to the climate, and that, unfortunately, is still a festering sore that has not been fixed in our environmental laws. They still don't require consideration of climate impacts. The Greens will continue to push for that, and we have a private members' bill to do that too. We've been pushing for that for many a year now.

Fast forward 10 years. Ten years on and the Labor government have committed to protecting groundwater and aquifers from the impacts of tight gas and shale gas extraction, but where is the legislation? They said it would be here by the end of the year. It's not here. It's been 10 years since the Greens first moved to extend the water trigger to cover all forms of unconventional gas extraction. After 10 years, you finally promised to do it, but you still haven't done it. We're here today, saying: 'Here's the bill. It's a very short bill. It's very easy drafting. It's a very simple concept.' It says that you should have protection for all aquifers from unconventional gas extraction, not just protection from coal seam gas but from tight and shale gas as well—from all forms of unconventional gas. We are reminding the Labor Party that this is their policy and they've said they'll do this. Well, here's your opportunity. We've done the work for you. It didn't take much. We did it 10 years ago. We're doing it again today.

We're urging this chamber to think seriously about getting on with protecting these aquifers, because we know the Beetaloo is on the brink of moving from exploration to production, and Tamboran Resources, who already have a very chequered history in how they've dealt not only with First Nations mobs up there but also with operations so far. I believe they've already been pinged for spraying toxic wastewater all over the site—and, when I say 'pinged', I mean it, because there were barely any consequences at all. These licences are about to transition from just exploration to production. At the very minute, the water trigger won't be able to impact that. The federal government won't be able to say: 'Hang on. We're really worried about these aquifers. We're hearing the concern from the scientific community. We're hearing the concern from First Nations owners. We'll at least take a look at this.' At the moment, they can't. The law doesn't allow them to do that. So this is a fix that the Beetaloo needs. This is a fix that First Nations communities need. This is the fix that our environment needs to have a halfway decent water trigger that actually properly considers the full impacts.

You have to be very patient in this job, I'm learning. It took us 10 years to get the national anticorruption body established. Again, you folk all laughed at us when we first proposed that in 2009. Now, in 2023, we have the independent National Anti-Corruption Commission, and that's great, but, boy, it took a while, didn't it? Here we are, 10 years on from proposing that the water trigger be expanded to unconventional gas, and we're still arguing the same thing and the two big parties still haven't done it. Despite one big party now having committed to doing it, they haven't yet followed through. We're very patient people, but I'm afraid we are running out of time.

This won't fix everything. As I said at the outset of my speech, this doesn't actually stop new coal or gas. It merely says that the minister for the environment has to consider the impacts on water resources from unconventional gas extraction. The minister is still entirely able to consider those impacts and say: 'Well, actually, I don't care. I'm going to tick off on this anyway because my big party just got big donations from the fossil fuel companies. My big party just got taken on a private plane trip by Tamboran Resources.' Our laws are that broken. This is the smallest of fixes. It enables the federal environment minister, whoever it might be at any point, to do the right thing for our water resources, for First Nations community and for the environment, not for the big gas companies. Whether the minister chooses to use those powers will be up to them, and we'd love to fix that too. But this would simply enable the minister to think about the impacts on water resources before ticking off on yet another fossil fuel project. We've already seen this environmental minister tick off on five new coalmines since taking office. I thought we'd had a change of government, and I'd hoped we'd have a change of climate policy, but the fossil fuel approvals have not slowed down, the climate impacts are still not required to be considered under our federal environment laws, and the water impacts can be ignored unless you're coal seam gas. If you're shale or tight gas then the law says: 'We don't care. Go right ahead. Be our guest. Here, have some more donations. Carry right on.' So this bill would enable protection for those WA and Northern Territory aquifers, and it would deliver on the Labor Party's belated promise to do this. We're still waiting, and the proverbial and literal Christmas is coming.

I want to come back to the fact that this will not stop unconventional gas extraction if the minister doesn't want it to stop. In fact, what the Greens would like to see, what the science dictates and what the International Energy Agency is saying is that we can't afford any new coal or gas. These laws would permit the environment minister to still tick off on new gas, even if there are going to be dastardly impacts on aquifers—which, likely, there will be. Actually, what we'd really like to see is a ban on new coal and gas, and we have separate private member's legislation to achieve that. It's what the science says. It's what the community wants. It's certainly what our aquifers and our climate deserve. But this bill—10 years after we first suggested this—would simply provide the same protection to aquifers in the west and in the Northern Territory as those on the east coast have had for some time now.

It doesn't fix the fact that First Nations communities don't have free, prior and informed consent over these projects. My colleagues Senator Cox and Senator Hanson-Young have been working really closely with traditional owners in the Beetaloo basin, who are desperately worried about the impacts on their land, on their culture and on their continued enjoyment of an area of which they've been caretakers for millennia. This bill doesn't give First Nations communities the right to say no. Again, we have a separate private member's bill to do that. Again, I introduced that in 2011. Twelve years ago we said that communities should have the right to say no to coal seam gas, coal and unconventional gas on their land. Our farming communities are precious. First Nations communities deserve the right to say no to projects that going to stuff up their land and water, poison the drinking water and potentially lower the groundwater level table from this gas fracking.

This bill is one part of the puzzle. The Labor Party say they want to do it, but time is ticking, folks. Here's a bill. It's a very simple bill. It doesn't fix all of the problems with unconventional gas extraction, and it still leaves a gaping hole in our environmental laws where there is no climate trigger, which we'd like to fix. It still leaves the environment minister with the ability to approve new coal and gas, which we'd like to fix. It doesn't help communities to say no to coal or gas, which, again, we'd like to fix. We've got other private members' bills that fix all of that. This bill simply says that the water trigger should not be blind to the needs of WA or the Northern Territory. I commend this bill to the chamber.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We need to get to the crux of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Expanding the Water Trigger) Bill 2023—that is, that this bill wants to expand on the water trigger powers of the federal bureaucracy. Having been working down here in Canberra for the last four years, I can tell you that there is only one word that ever comes out of the lips of the federal bureaucracy when it comes to actually trying to get resource projects up in this country, and that is 'no'. We have got state governments who are responsible for approving these regulations. I want to qualify that we should protect our water reservoirs and aquifers, by all means. I'm very passionate about that. But I don't see why we should give more powers to the Commonwealth when these companies already have to jump through hoops at the state level. All this will do is effectively create another hoop that the mining companies have to go through to get their projects approved. I have to mention that I haven't heard anything said this morning about the impacts of renewables—in particular, wind turbines and the bisphenol A that is in the epoxy resin on those wind turbines, as well as what's going to happen to all the cadmium and everything as solar panels erode—because there is no recycling scheme for renewables in this country. It seems to me that it's targeted at one particular industry and not at another industry, and that is why I'm pleased to say that the coalition is opposing this bill.

There's no need to have the federal government step in and override the powers of the state. I'm happy to assess the powers of the state. I've often said we need to have a federation convention that looks at the duplication of roles and responsibilities between the state and federal governments, because there is way too much bureaucratic tape in this country, and it's killing industry and progress. If there's one thing I know from my time travelling across the world it's that Australia is world class and looks after its environment better than most other countries in the world—if not all other countries in the world. The claim that somehow our environment is in terminal decline is absolute rubbish. It's funny—I look back at old photos, and at our property in western Queensland, for example, there's more mulga out there than ever. That's come at the expense of the grasslands—the Mitchell grass and things like that that should be growing there—because we're not allowed to manage the mulga like we should.

By all means, let's protect the environment, but at the same time we already have departments at the state level. I know, for example, that Link Energy was fined. The Labor state government at the time was a bit slow getting onto them, I have to say. That impacted my home town of Chinchilla, and that was known for a long time. But we need to take these claims of doom and gloom with a grain of salt. I know Professor Terry Hughes from North Queensland made a claim in a Senates estimates inquiry a number of years ago that there was coal dust all over the Great Barrier Reef, and that claim was absolutely debunked when they looked into it. I was up at Abbot Point with the current member for Dawson—he wasn't the current member then—and I couldn't get over it. We went out to the Abbot Point coal base, and we had a look at the terminal where the coal gets shipped off overseas, and there were stingrays and giant trevally swimming around. The water was pristine.

It's the same for gas. Gas has been bubbling out of the Condamine River for hundreds of years. My family was a pioneering family in that area in the early 1900s, and there were sightings then of the gas bubbling up through the river. It's not to say that fracking isn't a risk. It is a risk, and we have to address those risks properly. But I don't think that we have to go through two hoops and have two departments, especially a department in Canberra which we know—and we saw it with the Voice—is totally out of touch with the rest of Australia when it comes to trying to keep people in real jobs. It was their crazy neoliberal ideology in the Treasury department that effectively shut down manufacturing in this country. So Canberra bureaucrats are the last people we want to trust when it comes to looking at resource development projects in this country.

There's another thing I want to touch on when it comes to the water trigger act. I'll give a shout-out here to former Labor prime minister Ben Chifley. In some respects, he instigated the first water trigger act. I like to raise this because he invoked national security powers under section 51(vi) of the Constitution after World War II in order to get the Snowy Hydro scheme up and running. At the time, the states were initially against it. Ben Chifley very cleverly said that water security in this country is a national security concern, and I think it is. He went ahead and starting building what became one of the great infrastructure projects this country has ever seen. I would love to see the same thing continue to happen today. I'll come back to the east coast. I know some of the other people have been talking about Western Australia and the Northern Territory. We need to get water. We shouldn't be taking water out of the Murray-Darling. We need to be getting water into the Murray-Darling Basin. There is a very big river that runs parallel with the Great Dividing Range, from just below Warwick all the way down to Grafton, and then it runs out to sea. That's the Clarence River, and it runs from the north to the south for about 200 kilometres and then, from just above Kempsey, north for another 100 kilometres. The beauty of this river is it runs parallel with the Great Dividing Range. It stays high, and it's in a high-rainfall area. This was part of the original John Bradfield scheme, and this is something I think we need to look at.

We often talk about bringing water from the north to the south, which is unfeasible. It won't work. The water will evacuate before it even gets to Lake Eyre from North Queensland. I'm not against pushing it west as far as Hughenden, but we really need to look at doing it in the Northern Rivers in New South Wales. The beauty of doing it on the Clarence is that you only need a 10-kilometre pipeline to get it back to the Gwydir River and into the Copeton Dam, and from that point onwards you've got it into the Murray-Darling system. The water would come in above the Macquarie Marshes. One of the paradoxes of the Murray-Darling system is, if you actually drive west from Sydney to Bathurst, you'll see the start of the Macquarie River there. It's very easy to remember the Macquarie runs north, and the Lachlan—Lachlan Macquarie I often refer to—will run south-west. But the Macquarie runs north-west all the way right up to the Burke and then turns around and runs south. So we get a lot of evaporation. It's got to go up through the Macquarie Marshes—and my colleague from New South Wales Senator Cadell is nodding—and you get a lot of evaporation just through there as well.

If you can get that water into Copeton Dam from the east coast and push it through, you could take, say, two or three per cent out of the Clarence—that wouldn't touch the sides with the Clarence—and you would actually get an enormous amount of water. That would make a big difference to the Murray-Darling system. It's not just about irrigation but also about environmental flows. That is something I think that we need to look at doing, along with other projects like changing the barrages in South Australia. It's absolutely ridiculous that the lakes in South Australia are actually fresh water when naturally they're estuaries; they're actually more salt water or brackish water. We let all the water go from Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria down to South Australia, and we get large amounts of evaporation. From my home town of Chinchilla, where we sit on the mighty Condamine—that flows all the way to South Australia, but, for every 11 litres that crosses the border, only one litre makes it to South Australia. So I ask you: why are we letting so much water evaporate or, when it does get to the sea, run out to sea rather than utilising it on the way down?

I'm all for introducing water efficiency projects. Another one would be at the Menindee Lakes. Yet again, we get lots of misinformation. Whenever the Menindee Lakes dry up, we get all this, 'Oh, the Menindee Lakes are dry.' But the thing about the Menindee Lakes is they're only 20 feet deep, and you get 12 feet of evaporation a year. So, if you don't get much rain in western New South Wales, it's going to basically evaporate in two years. I know that because, where our property is in western Queensland, we've got a house dam that's 20 feet deep, and, if we miss out on summer rain, we're going to run out of water by the end of the second summer. So that's something that, yet again, doesn't get spoken about. But, if you want to stop the evaporation, put a wall halfway through and, rather than have it sitting at, say, six feet over a wider area, halve the surface area and have it at 12 feet, so you have less evaporation. It's things like that that we need to look at.

Anyway, I'm glad to say we won't be supporting this bill today, not because we don't care about the environment and not because we don't want to preserve our water reservoirs and basins but because we don't need any more red tape. You're better off taking that money spent on the Canberra bureaucracy and actually building a dam on the Clarence River, like Ben Chifley did after World War II, pushing some of that water out into our Murray-Darling system.

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

I rise to also add my voice and make a contribution to my colleague's private senator's bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Expanding the Water Trigger) Bill 2023. I want to echo comments made by my colleagues Senator Hanson-Young and Senator Waters about the importance of this bill and the urgency with which we need to do this. This bill is, in fact, something that the government should have already done a long time ago. It ensures that all forms of unconventional gas development, or fracking as it's known, are assessed for their impact on water.

Before I go on, I want to address some of Senator Rennick's comments in relation to red tape. In my home state of Western Australia they've tried to introduce a mining exploration fee of $859. If anyone in the community—an environmental group, a traditional owner group—wants to object to any exploration in relation to the impact on water, this is being used as a tool to silence them. The red tape that is being referred to in this chamber today is in fact being used to silence the people who are objecting to its impact. We know fracking uses an exceptional amount of water. There are varying types, with one estimate from the United States government saying that one well alone can use between 5.6 million and 36 million litres of water. The Northern Territory government has said fracking can use the equivalent of eight to 12 Olympic-size swimming pools of water during the lifetime of just one well. And many fracking sites will have multiple wells. It's estimated that the Beetaloo Basin will have approximately 90 wells, which is remarkable, when you think about it.

The current legislative framework does not require the government to take this into account when issuing those environmental approvals for fracking. This requirement currently exists for coal-seam gas development and large coalmines if they will have a significant impact on the water resource. Senator Waters has already mentioned the impact in my home state of Western Australia and in the Northern Territory, where some of this is quite urgent. Closing this legislative loophole in a timely manner, which we're trying to do but which the government refuses to—despite the fact that they committed to this change—is also, as Senator Hanson-Young outlined, recommended in the Northern Territory's independent scientific inquiry into fracking of onshore unconventional reservoirs in the Northern Territory conducted by Justice Pepper as well as the Senate inquiry into oil and gas exploration and production in the Beetaloo.

So, the question begs: why are we ignoring all that? Why are we continuing down this pathway, when we know water is so important for the life of this planet? It's a precious resource that we can't afford to throw away, particularly for dirty climate-destroying fossil fuel projects, without some serious scrutiny and proper consideration.

As a First Nations woman I know water is so crucial, particularly for the cultural vitality and resilience of my people, my culture and my identity. It has a very important place for us. That includes within our artwork, our sacred stories and our songs. And I think all of us in this place are familiar with the land rights movement that led to the monumental High Court decisions and legislation that included the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 and the Native Title Act 1993. However, the water rights were intentionally excluded from native title. Despite native title covering 40 per cent of this landmass, First Nations people have only 0.2 per cent of surface water being covered under this legislation.

Water is such a sacred resource for First Nations communities. As I 've already said, it holds life, sustains us, sustains our country. It's an integral part of what links us to our identity. It is something that in the old days we used in order to define our language boundaries, our ceremonial places, and it underpins many of our land management practices. The health of our water sources is vital to the health of our community in more ways than just having water to drink and rivers to fish in. As I've said before in this place, First Nations people are not separate from country. We are interconnected with it. We are one with country. That includes our land, our waters and our sky. So, if country is healthy, we are healthy.

I come from both freshwater and saltwater nations, and it is in fact my birthright to protect and care for country and for water, and I do this with pride for my people. I remember as a child hearing some of those stories about the creator spirit. If you listen closely in a welcome to country or an acknowledgement of country that people give, when they talk about country, they talk about the creator spirit. In my country it's called the Wagyl. The Wagyl was a creator spirit who created the waterways. He created the land formations. Further north, in my Yamatji nation, it's called the Bimara. Many of the other First Nations people around the country also have that birthright. They are fighting the same fight for their old people. It's in our blood. The importance of that can also be seen in my home state of Western Australia, where the people who belong to the Martuwarra River, which is famous for its recent flooding in Western Australia, gave a bark petition to the Western Australian government about saving a famous swordfish that is not found anywhere else. They talk very intimately about its worth, its importance and its spiritual connection for the local people who surround the Martuwarra.

That's why traditional owners from right across this country are fighting fossil fuel projects and water licences that already do and will impact sacred water sources and destroy our underwater cultural heritage. We are seeing this especially in the Northern Territory, where the Roper River is under threat from careless water licences that are being issued by the Northern Territory government. The Roper River is the second-largest river in the Territory. It spans 400 kilometres and has a catchment area of 80,000 square kilometres. It is home to plant and animal species that are not found anywhere else. That is the remarkable place of our continent, of our nations that make up Australia—that in fact there are plant and animal species that are not found anywhere else. More importantly, this is a vital source for First Nations people in the area that that spans, across the Roper. It's all under threat by this government and the Northern Territory government.

This bill is so integral and so crucial in making sure we close those loopholes. The traditional owners from the Beetaloo are already seeing the impacts of fracking, particularly the impact on the Roper. They were recently in this building, and they issued a statement which I'd like to read out now on their behalf. It says: 'Water is life for us. We need it to survive, and to keep country and culture healthy. Our communities will be some of the most affected by shale gas fracking. Our land is sacred. We don't want to see it fracked. Our water is sacred. It should not be poisoned. We can already see the climate changing. It is already getting too hot. We see the changes in the bush, in the seasons. We know this planned gas fracking will make climate change worse. We know if this fracking goes ahead we may not be able to live on country like we have for thousands and thousands of years. We need your help to keep our culture, our water, our climate and our children's futures safe. We ask you to pass laws in parliament this year to (1) extend the EPBC water trigger to shale and tight gas; and (2) revise the significant impact guidelines for the water trigger to require the consideration of the cultural and spiritual value and significance of water resources to First Nations people.'

It's unbelievable that we've just come out of a referendum with a government that says it's listening to First Nations people's voices. Last night I went to an event about Indigenous protected areas, where we had ministers from this place and from the other place talk about land and sea country and the importance of protecting that. You can't do that under ranger programs and then not pass laws in this place to make sure that the job gets done, because we put the onus onto the people and then they have to go into courts and mount legal cases to contest their country and their water not being protected.

This bill helps achieve one of those asks from people whose country will be most impacted by fracking and the water that it uses. The Greens have listened, and we implore people in this place to also listen and, most importantly, to do so with the sense of urgency that this deserves and absolutely needs. This is the birth right that I've been given, and it is our obligation to do so. These traditional owners and many others across the country are simply doing what we do best, protect our country, because we know that we've protected country and country will continue to protect us, but we must preserve that as we have done for 65,000 years.

The Native Title Report 2008 talks about Indigenous people having the 'right to the equal exercise and enjoyment of our human right to water'. This is really important because although people say that the states already have legislation, that they already have a mandate to do this and the Commonwealth doesn't have a place, the Commonwealth does have a place. There are seven different international instruments that talk about the protection of our rights to water as Indigenous peoples and we are signatories to all of them. So it is important for us in the Commonwealth to ensure that there is consistency. Right now on my desk is the draft report of the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs inquiry in relation to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. How can we talk about domesticating that law when we're not even going to line it up with what we're talking about today? How can we do that when we're not going to protect the precious water sources that Indigenous people have a special connection to? We must ensure not only that it continues to be protected under international law but that it also provides the rights for us to practise, revitalise, teach and develop our culture, our customs and our spiritual practices and to utilise our natural resources in the way that we should be utilising them and not to have them destroyed in the interests of industries that don't have to live there, that don't have to raise their families there, that don't have to collect bush food there. Those industries can walk away from that. It is those communities that are left behind. It is First Nations people in the north of Australia who are at the forefront of this impact, who are fighting the impacts of climate change, who are fighting the big fossil fuel companies in this country—and, my, they are putting up a mighty fight against them.

I'm so proud of those nations for standing tall in relation to this. I implore the government to do the right thing today and support this bill to ensure that there is a water trigger in the EPBC Act in order to protect those communities, to make sure that we can hold people accountable for the impact that that will have on their waters, because they will be the first people moving into towns, moving away from country, becoming sicker and dying a lot faster, and that in fact is about closing the gap. It is our obligation, senators, to think about the impact of that legislation and to know that we have the power to change that. We have the power to make laws in this place to ensure that we are in fact closing the gap, because, as I said, healthy country means healthy people and it means a healthier environment.

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

I thank Senator Hanson-Young for bringing forward this urgent bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Expanding the Water Trigger) Bill 2023 [No. 2]. In the short period of time that I've got left, I would like to highlight how proud I am that the Greens are in this place today standing up for farmers and rural communities on the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales who have been fighting Santos tooth and nail to stop their precious water supplies from being contaminated.

Isn't it fascinating that the Nationals and the Liberal Party come in here every week, trying to get up a Senate inquiry, saying that they're standing with rural communities around the country and trying to stop the roll out of renewable energy, but not once have I heard them come in to this chamber and stand up for the farming communities on the Liverpool Plains and in other parts of our country that are fighting tooth and nail to stop these dirty fossil fuel companies chasing their profits and putting farmers' livelihoods at risk. It's the Greens that are doing that and the farming communities around this country are recognising that it is actually the Greens that are standing up for their precious land and their precious water.

I am very keen to hear the contributions from the National Party and the Liberal Party. In the 15 seconds I have left, how about I lay down a challenge to anyone from the Liberal and National parties to come into this chamber and stand up for farmers on the Liverpool Plains? The fracking issue in this country has been front and centre and a significant matter of public interest now for many, many years, and yet not once has anyone from the National Party, who say they represent farmers—in fact, I correct myself; I think Senator Canavan said famously a few years ago that they are now representing the fossil fuel industry, the coal companies and the gas companies rather than rural communities. This bill before us today is an urgent reform. You can't eat coal and you can't drink gas. Expanding the water trigger would protect our farms and rural communities from the damage that coal seam gas wreaks on life-giving groundwater. Senator Cox has so eloquently put the impact this has on our first Nations communities around the country, and Senator Hanson-Young has talked about why we need this to protect our environment. Well, as Greens agricultural spokesperson today I'm here to talk about why we should be protecting our rural communities.

Santos is currently attempting to steamroll communities on the Liverpool Plains, communities made up of hardworking Australian farmers who are opposed to fracking in some of the most productive and prime agricultural land in this country. Coal seam gas extraction has the potential to significantly impact groundwater and aquifers and jeopardise our farmland production. First Nations across the country, notably in the Beetaloo in the Northern Territory and Pilliga in New South Wales, have spoken about the dangers of the impacts of coal seam gases on cultural heritage underpinned by healthy groundwater and aquifers. Expanding the water trigger—

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the debate has expired.