Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Environment and Communications References Committee for inquiry and report by 1 May 2024:

The implications of Glencore's proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) project by its subsidiary, Carbon Transport and Storage Corporation (CTSCo), in the Great Artesian Basin, with particular reference to:

(a) the environmental impact assessment process and the adequacy of the project's approval by federal and state regulatory bodies, including the decision not to classify the project as a controlled action under national environment law;

(b) the potential risks and impacts of the project on the groundwater quality within the Great Artesian Basin, especially concerning the findings related to the acidification of groundwater and mobilisation of heavy metals such as lead and arsenic;

(c) the scientific basis and transparency of the data supporting the project's safety claims, including the robustness of fieldwork, data, and analysis presented by CTSCo and critiques by independent hydrogeologists and aqueous geochemists;

(d) the potential socioeconomic impacts on agriculture and regional communities, relying on the Great Artesian Basin for water, including an assessment of the project's impact on existing and future water use rights;

(e) the consultation processes undertaken with stakeholders, including farmers, Indigenous landholders, environmental groups, and the broader public, and the adequacy of these processes in addressing stakeholder concerns;

(f) the potential precedent set by allowing CCS projects within the Great Artesian Basin and its implications for future projects, considering Australia's strategic interests in preserving its largest groundwater system;

(g) the role of CCS technology in Australia's broader climate change mitigation strategy, including an evaluation of its efficacy, risks and alternatives; and

(h) any other related matters.

Today I seek to refer a matter to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee that has profound implications for the future of regional Australia. For some time now farmers have been raising very serious concerns about a trial to capture carbon dioxide and store it in the Great Artesian Basin. This three-year trial has been proposed by a subsidiary of the multinational coalmining company Glencore.

The trial proposes to capture waste carbon dioxide emissions from the Millmerran Power Station in Queensland, turn it to a supercritical fluid and inject up to 330,000 tonnes of it into the Precipice Sandstone aquifer. This aquifer is more than two kilometres deep. It's inside the Great Artesian Basin, one of the most important natural resources in Australia. If the Great Artesian Basin was a country, it would be the 17th-largest in the world at more than 1.7 million square kilometres. It's one of the largest groundwater basins on the planet, with almost 65 million gigalitres of water—enough to fill the Sydney Harbour about 130,000 times over. It mainly covers Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, and part of the Northern Territory.

Long before British settlement, springs of water emanating from the basin allowed Indigenous communities to travel and trade and survive in Australia. When it was discovered by settlers in the 1870s, it was quickly realised it was a vital water resource for the dry Australian interior. Since then it has been essential in the development of our agricultural and mining industries, and for hundreds of regional, rural and remote communities. Water from the basin supports production worth almost $13 billion a year. It remains as essential today as it has always been. Australia is, after all, the driest inhabited continent on earth, and every source of fresh water is important. This is why I'm disturbed by the proposal to inject waste CO2 into the basin's water. I'm disturbed that, while recent research has improved our knowledge of the basin, there is still much to learn, and this makes for uncertain risks when introducing foreign material to the basin's groundwater.

Even the proponent company's own commissioned study found the project could cause levels of lead and arsenic in the groundwater to rise hundreds of times beyond the safe drinking water guidelines. This would be due to increased acidity caused by the injection of supercritical CO2 leaching these heavy metals from the surrounding rocks and spreading it throughout aquifers in the basin. I'm also advised by expert geologist Emeritus Professor Ian Plimer of the University of Melbourne that this could result in significant clogging of the cracks and fractures in the surrounding rocks, thereby limiting the places where bores can be placed or reducing the rate of flow in other bores.

I acknowledge that Glencore's subsidiary Carbon Transport and Storage Corporation has stressed that the groundwater in the precipice sandstone aquifer is already non-potable and so deep it would be expensive for a farmer to sink a bore. I acknowledge that some of the science says the risks of the project are minimal and manageable. However, the science on the basin is not complete and our farmers have been down this road before with fracking. They have legitimate concerns about the contamination of groundwater in the basin, so much so that Queensland's AgForce organisation has this week announced it would launch a legal challenge.

AgForce says it will seek a judicial review of the decision taken in 2022 that found that the project did not need to be assessed under the EPBC Act—the environmental protection act. AgForce says confidence in our food supply is at genuine risk because of the proposal. I agree with them, although there are many more genuine risks to our food supply thanks to Labor's multiple attacks on Australia's world-leading agricultural sector. Let's list some of them: ending live sheep exports that support thousands of regional jobs; crippling energy and fuel costs; farmland polluted by 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines, thanks to Labor's suicidal net zero policy; Labor's terrible 'closing the loopholes' legislation, destroying casual and seasonal employment and forcing a great deal more red and green tape on farmers; and Labor and the Greens forcing more water from irrigators through devastating buybacks that destroy communities in the Murray-Darling Basin for no environmental benefit.

Labor has an opportunity here to show some belated support for our struggling farmers. Labor has an opportunity here to protect one of the most important natural resources in this country. It's clear to me that a great deal less potential harm would come from simply letting the CO2 enter the atmosphere than pumping it into the Great Artesian Basin. At least it would benefit the crops and pastures being grown by our farmers. This project is a bit of a canary in the coalmine. Its success or failure will have implications for similar projects in the future. We know there are already some existing applications. Glencore is just the start. Glencore is the first, but how many others will be given the right to dispose of their CO2 in the basin?

Of course none of this would be happening if the major parties weren't grovelling to climate change zealots and pursuing the net zero fantasy. This fantasy drives policy into ridiculous outcomes like vast areas of pristine rainforest being cleared for wind farms. Wind turbines—they're not a 'farm'. To call them that is destroying the word 'farm'. They are wind turbines, and they are destroying the environment in order to save it. What a joke that is! The Greens cry out the loudest in this place about the environment, yet I don't hear them screaming out against the wind turbines that are actually resulting in the clearing of hundreds of thousands of acres of land. There is clearing of rainforest, destroying habitats and flora and fauna, and you say nothing about it. It does more damage, but you keep putting them up. Then there is the fear of fire, if they catch fire—which they do.

Then you destroy prime agricultural land to put up your solar panels. That's another disgraceful act that I see happening throughout Queensland and the rest of the country. Farmers can't clear the land to grow crops, but you can clear the land to put in solar panels. There is no problem with that. Let's clear the land. You stop people from moving a tree off their land for some reason or other, but let's clear the land to put up solar panels and wind turbines. None of this is saving anything. It's not helping to reduce the world's carbon dioxide emissions, which is supposed to be the ultimate goal of the net zero fantasy—and fantasy is exactly what it is. Global emissions continue to rise.

It is not saving us any money. It costs us billions in taxpayer subsidies and it is driving more Australian households into poverty, thanks to record-high energy costs. We went through this carbon capture stuff before with last year's sea dumping bill. The idea that natural formations can form permanent, perfectly sealed storages from which CO2 won't eventually escape is ludicrous. Nature is not that perfect, despite what the Greens would have us believe. They are on about it again today, crying their crocodile tears about 2023 being the hottest year on record. Since when? They only started taking records in around 1910. The end of the 18th century here was so hot. You don't want that recorded, because it would prove that temperatures were hotter then than they are today. We didn't have industrialisation. We didn't have the built-up cities, so actually you have to just get rid of all those records that go back only as far as 1910.

Planet Earth is more than 4½ billion years old and the evidence is undeniable that it has been both much hotter and much cooler in the past due to influences that have nothing to do with us humans. We have been on Earth for only—what, 300,000 years? But that doesn't stop Greens activists from traumatising our children with confected tales of global doom, and the Labor Party have gone along with this as well. As I've said, the sea dumping bill debate last year was disgraceful, and I spoke about it. There is no place in the world where it has worked—where it has stayed captured. We went along with this. When I asked the minister if commercial arrangements could be made with other countries to bring their rubbish out here, she wasn't interested. She said, 'No, those are commercial arrangements with the companies and nothing to do with us.' It has everything to do with the Labor Party, because you have allowed it in your legislation for sea dumping to happen in Australia. That is why it has a lot to do with you.

It is the same with allowing CO2 to be dumped in the Great Artesian Basin. We don't know the risks. The science is not clear on this. If you allow this to happen, you could destroy the Queensland farming sector, communities, towns' drinking water—we don't know. Are you prepared to play around with that? Are you prepared to take the risk? Well, most of you will probably be going out the back door in the next few years, so it would be no concern of yours: 'Let the future generations deal with that; it is no concern of ours.' You're more interested in the next election, in getting yourselves elected again to protect your jobs without looking to the future of this country and at what is happening.

Five mayors across Queensland have actually said they are against this. They are saying, 'Don't allow this to happen; stop.' Glencore is just the start of it. If they go through this trial and are allowed to dump then that will be the start of all these other organisations dumping CO2. As I said, it would be 330 tonnes of this supercritical waste and nobody here can tell me that would not be a risk. It is one hell of a risk.

We only have so much water on this earth, so much water in Australia. The government have done nothing to improve our water supply in this nation. You haven't built more dams or anything. You have let it slide. You are for high immigration. You have not prepared for the future, for increased population growth. If you allow this to happen and this destroys our artesian basin, what is your plan then? Oh, that's right—Labor never have a second plan; they don't know where to go after that. You always blame the previous government—it is their fault—for what has happened and what has gone wrong, because you don't think ahead. You have no idea how to plan for the future. You are absolutely hopeless at what you do.

I'm putting this up for the vote. Common sense should prevail here, that you do not allow this to go ahead, that you stop it from happening. I hope the Greens are on board with this. If they don't support this motion for it to go to an inquiry, they're hypocrites. They're absolute hypocrites if this is not supported. They're always screaming about the environment, always screaming about fracking and always screaming about the damage to our country and all the rest of it. So I hope that the Greens actually vote for this to go to an inquiry so we can have an investigation into this. I hope Senator David Pocock is watching. Senator Pocock has always got control of the Senate here. I hope that he sees common sense and understands that it needs to go to an inquiry so that we can actually have a greater understanding of the implications that may happen.

I thank Professor Ian Plimer for the information that he's given me. This is a man with real knowledge who understands the science. He has informed me of the implications and what could happen. I am more prepared to listen to him than I am prepared to listen to the Labor Party in this chamber, who put spin on so many of the policies and wipe their hands of it and couldn't care less, because it's in the too-hard basket. I wish we'd get some people with some knowledge in this place. Honestly—the incompetence. You have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to climate change and what's actually happening. You're just fearmongering.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor is always supportive of Senate scrutiny of important environmental matters. However, on this matter, the government won't be supporting this motion. There are a few issues that I'd like to draw to the attention of the chamber. It's been an interesting hour, sitting here listening to the debate and watching what's happening on the other side of this chamber. It confirms a few interesting things, that have been going on, on what passes for the conservative side of Australian politics these days.

I am old enough to remember a time when there was a difference between the One Nation party and the Liberals and Nationals. I'm old enough to remember a time when that difference mattered very much to a previous generation of Liberal and National party leaders, people who I wouldn't have agreed with in a pink fit on almost any question. But former Prime Minister John Howard understood the existential threat that far-right politics posed for the Liberal Party and the National Party. To her credit, Senator Hanson understood it well too. Former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer understood it. Former senator Ron Boswell understood it. They understood really clearly what it meant for the national interest, but there is not a crack of daylight between the positions of these characters now—what passes for a conservative outfit in the Liberal and National parties.

I understand Senator Hanson's frustration at that. I understand it. There's a sort of relevance deprivation that occurs when the right-wing extremists in Mr Dutton's Liberal Party are becoming more and more. Why give coverage on the extreme right to Senator Hanson when you can go to Senator Antic, who now leads the Liberal Party ticket in South Australia or to Senator Rennick or to any of these other odd characters? That's something that there ought to be a little bit of reflection on over there. There's not any at the moment. You don't see the danger. That's the nature of these sorts of challenges. It's all bound up in the grievance politics and the culture war and all of that nonsense. That's what happens.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Point of order: relevance is to the motion about the Great Artesian Basin. This has got nothing to do with who's at the top of the ticket in South Australia.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Hanson. I'm actually going to uphold your point of order, Senator Hanson. Although debates, Minister—

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the point of order: at best, you could describe the previous contribution as wideranging, Mr Acting Deputy President McGrath, and my comments were directly relevant to the politics that are driving this.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the chamber realises that I'm particularly soft, and I do enjoy a wideranging debate, but perhaps we could wander back to the motion that is before the chair at the moment, Minister.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will precisely follow your direction and wander back to the direct proposition that is here. One of the issues that underlies this is that, for a request, such as the core proposition in Senator Hanson's motion, to be taken seriously, there must be consistency. When you end up being absorbed by all the right-wing, culture-war, alt-right, extremist nonsense, consistency stops mattering, because what you're worried about is the clicks. What you're worried about are all of the memes. What you're worried about are the earnest pieces to camera, frothing with indignation, about some made-up nonsense. That's what matters, not the substance, not the consistency.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts, I imagine this is a point of order.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's not wandering; he's meandering.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Roberts. Whether it's a wander or a meander, I would encourage everybody in the chamber to address their comments to the motion before the chair.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course consistency matters. On this matter, who was the environment minister who decided that the carbon capture and storage project referred to in Senator Hansen's motion was not a controlled action? Who was that minister? It wasn't Minister Plibersek. It was Minister Ley in the previous government who decided that that was the case. The truth is that the processes that are allowed under the act mean that there is scope for judicial review of the former minister's decision. Now, I don't know whether this was a period when there were multiple ministers occupying this position, but it was Minister Ley who made that determination. I don't think she's out there issuing press releases, if that's what she did. But it is now before the Federal Court of Australia, and it wouldn't be appropriate to comment further on those proceedings.

In the contribution that I just heard there were claims made about water security in regional areas. The old adage is that members of the National Party, in particular, go around in the lead-up to elections making big claims about the dams that they're going to build and then disappoint their constituents by not delivering. Of course, they point the finger at everybody else.

I remember when Mr Joyce and Mr Abbott wandered around the country in 2013 saying they were going to build 100 dams. Very earnest and serious people, like Senator McGrath, who has been out talking about dams every day of the week, believed them, if I remember his contributions correctly. How many dams did they build? It was not five out of 100, not four out of 100 and not three out of 100. They built two out of 100. If they had built all of the dams that Mr Abbott and Mr Joyce said they would build, the sea level would be lower! It is an absolute hoax that is perpetrated on country communities by the National Party and others claiming that they are going to build infrastructure that they know they are never going to build. They had a decade. They promised country people they would build 100 dams. How many did they build? Two. They ought not be taken seriously on these questions ever again.

We should be clear about how disingenuous the Nationals are on this matter of Glencore. In June 2022 the Leader of the Nationals, Mr Littleproud, whose electorate this project is in, said on the Insiders program, 'Look about 60 kilometres west of where I'm sitting now, and carbon capture and storage has been implemented on a cool-fired power station'—Millmerran—'That's the investment the Morrison government made. It will be interesting to see how the Liberals and Nationals intend to vote on this proposition. It will be interesting to see whether it is Mr Littleproud last year or Mr Littleproud this year. Where are they? Are they for the carbon capture and storage technology that they say is essential to protecting the integrity of all of these projects that Senator McDonald and others wander around the country saying are so important? Are they fer it or are they agin' it?

The truth is they are both. They say one thing on Monday and another thing on Tuesday. On Wednesday it's a whole new ballgame because, in this world of far-right extremism and culture war nonsense, the facts have stopped mattering for them. They stopped mattering quite some time ago. If you can put it in a meme, it matters. That's where the Nationals are.

Now they want to pretend that they have nothing to do with this project that they were on television supporting in 2022, that the government they were part of didn't make decisions that meant that AgForce is out there seeking a judicial review. What is the Liberal and National Party position on this? Less than two years ago, Mr Littleproud was spruiking the project, saying that it protected gas but also protected our coal industry with carbon capture and storage. He was for it. Now, I guess, we'll find out if he is for it or against it.

So desperate is this show over here to try to cobble together a conservative coalition on energy policy that they are for the project and they're against it. No doubt we're about to hear a whole lot of stuff about how a giant nuclear power station in an unspecified place would resolve some of these issues. They won't be, I imagine, in marginal electorates that the Liberal and National parties seek to win at the next election. Whether we are talking about untested, experimental technology, in terms of the small nuclear modular reactors that they keep talking about or the big tens of billions of dollars 'never get done' nuclear reactors, so desperate are they to hold themselves together on energy policy that you end up with stunts like this that once again bring together One Nation, the Nationals and the Liberals on a course of action, resulting in a direction in energy policy that will lead only to higher bills, projects never being built, manufacturing going offshore, higher prices for consumers and higher emissions. Australia will be once again out in the cold in terms of investment and economic activity, reduced to the pariah-state status that Mr Morrison reduced the country to in our region and around the world.

It's the direction that those opposite are taking the show in. It is utter hypocrisy. It's utterly dishonest. It's 'say one thing one day and do another thing the next'. It is a complete betrayal of what that side used to say that they stood for, and the government's voting position on this particular motion will reflect our view of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debate interrupted.