Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to declare that I am a landholder. I have agricultural businesses that rely on the Great Artesian Basin as their water source. I wish to bring to your urgent attention the fact that Glencore's CTSCo has a proposal to change section 41 of the Queensland Environmental Protection Regulation 2019 to further enable sequestering of carbon dioxide, CO2, supercritical fluid into the precipice sandstone water aquifer of the Great Artesian Basin. Their proposed amendment is shown in the Glencore briefing notes and specifically refers to the likely deterioration in environmental values of the receiving groundwater. Glencore has a trial site at Moonie/Meandarra on the Western Downs and is calling for submissions as part of the environmental impact statement in respect of this project. I have met with Scott Elliott, the operations manager of Glencore, and he has told me that it is their intention to begin coalmining operations at the coal lease at Wandoan in Central Queensland. They hope to build a coal gasification plant at Wandoan and produce hydrogen. The hydrogen will be piped to Gladstone and the CO2 will be piped to their site at Moonie/Meandarra. They also intend to build a hydrogen power station to power the project. Several years ago, Glencore CTSCo had a similar proposal at their property Glenhaven, at Wandoan, adjacent to their coal lease. This project was abandoned due to the significant angst generated in the community at the prospect of polluting the Great Artesian Basin, which the towns of Wandoan and Taroom and many farming families rely on as their principal water source.

To allow Glencore to change the Environmental Protection Regulation, to allow them to potentially pump millions of tons of hypercritical CO2 fluid into the aquifer of the Great Artesian Basin, is absolutely outrageous. The Great Artesian Basin is the world's largest underground potable water source. It covers 70 per cent of the area of Queensland and is the lifeblood of many rural communities and agricultural sectors in Queensland. It is the eighth natural wonder of the world. It is the outback's Great Barrier Reef, in effect. To even contemplate compromising this treasured water asset on the earth's driest habitable continent is absolutely unthinkable madness. CTSCo's own groundwater impact assessment technical report clearly states that any site where CO2 is injected into the precipice water source will, in effect, render it useless to anyone else in future.

I implore you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and everybody, to not allow this change in the Queensland Environmental Protection Regulation. The consequences of doing so will potentially lead to the contamination of the Great Artesian Basin, rendering it useless for future generations.