Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

the Nationals have a five-point plan to expand the coal seam gas industry and, for the benefit of members opposite, I will point out a media release that the member for Wide Bay and Leader of the Nationals put out in November 2011. It is called 'Nationals launch coal seam gas blueprint' and the first line of it says:

FEDRAL Leader of The Nationals Warren Truss has today outlined a blueprint for coal seam gas development in Australia.

That is right! They have actually got a blueprint, a five-point plan, to roll out coal seam gas mining across Australia. They say in that that they adopted a policy and finalised a set of principles, so they have a very strong commitment to rolling out coal seam gas mining.

I would now like to turn to the visit that we had from Senator Barnaby Joyce to the North Coast. He also was able to confirm the commitment the Nationals have to coal seam gas mining, and I would like to refer to a story on the front page of The Byron Shire Echo, from 9 April. I will quote from the interview that Senator Joyce did with them. It says:

Mr Joyce told The Echo that CSG is a hot button issue for the upcoming election. He said however that many Byron Shire residents may not agree with his view that the CSG industry should continue.

'We shouldn't have a moratorium,' he said …

So there it is on the front page of The Byron Shire Echo. That is what the Nationals stand for, and that was reiterated in that front-page article on 9 April. I think it shows that it is no surprise that the Nationals candidate there, as I have already said, is a big, strong supporter of CSG mining. It is no surprise he had Senator Barnaby Joyce up there campaigning for him; they are great mates in supporting the CSG industry. But it goes on—we just see so many instances of the Liberal and National parties supporting the coal seam gas industry.

Of course we know that recently we had an amendment to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment Bill 2013 in which we had water as a trigger in relation to CSG activities. Speaking in the Senate, the Liberals' Senator Birmingham, the shadow parliamentary secretary for the environment, told the Senate that the coalition does not like the legislation but they would not oppose it. What he did say was:

We will work to fix these issues should we succeed later this year.

So there we see it: that is their secret agenda. They want to roll it out right across the board, and it was seen there very, very clearly.

Mr Laming interjecting—

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