Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Page for raising this important issue in parliament today. For a long time the member for Page, together with the member for Richmond, has raised concerns on behalf of communities in northern New South Wales about the impact of coal seam gas. Members of this House need to understand that what is happening in New South Wales is quite different from what is happening in other states. In states like Queensland there are exclusion zones around the settled areas, preventing the serious loss of groundwater through coal seam gas exploration and extraction from having an impact on urban areas. When I dealt with the proposals in Queensland, advice came back about concerns about subsidence, where land height significantly drops after water has been extracted. In terms of environmental impact on endangered species or something like that, the impact is minimal, but if you are talking about a settled the area where ground subsidence occurs under people's homes, under schools and under roads, the impact is far more serious.

In New South Wales, instead of it being only in areas well away from settled areas, there are proposals not only in New England which have had a lot of publicity but also on the far north coast of New South Wales, in the Hunter, in the Illawarra and in Western Sydney. So the government, in putting forward the national partnership agreement, has put forward the money for the states to make sure that, for their processes, independently paid for science has to be locked into informing their planning decisions.

Mr Matheson interjecting—

The SPEAKER: The member for Macarthur will leave the chamber under standing order 94A.

The member for Macarthur then left the chamber.

Queensland has signed up to that, Victoria has signed up to that, South Australia has signed up to that, but New South Wales asked for a protocol that is different from every other state to make sure that not every proposal is going to be caught.

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

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