Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. The bill seeks to overturn state laws which seek to properly balance the competing interests of the owners of surface rights to land as granted by a particular state with the rights granted by the same state to explore for and produce coal seam gas. It does this by ensuring that, at a minimum, surface owners are fully compensated for any economic loss or inconvenience as determined through a proper process. Such a change in this bill would enable the owners of any surface right to extract economic rents in exchange for authorising exploration for and production of gas of which they have no ownership, never had any ownership and never wanted any ownership, thus depriving the wider community—all of us—of its right to maximise its return from assets commonly held. This has been the case since European settlement of this continent in the 18th century and it has been the case in right of the Crown since the 12th century in Great Britain. This bill seeks to overturn that right of common ownership, common value and common return to the government—to the people—by the Crown through the provision of common services.

The excuse for overturning these long-established state systems is concern about the alleged environmental impacts of coal seam gas projects. But the bill itself does not do one thing for the environment. It simply transfers control of assets owned by us—or by us through the state—to owners of any interest no matter how remote in terms of surface rights. The bill proposes no change to environmental regulation, because it does not need to. Where matters of national economic significance are involved, the EPBC Act comes into play, as it did with all current Queensland CSG projects—projects which the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Mr Burke, on behalf of this government—