Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know whether this parliament is confused, but certainly my Rural Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee is. We were told, Minister, that because of your schedule and availability you and Senator Conroy could not fit into the estimates program. I have no idea what that means, but I do know the effect. The rural and transport committee deals with a whole range of very serious matters, presently ranging from coal seam gas and all sorts of things like that to the conduct of the wheat authorities. I have never really been confused about some things in life, but I am pretty confused about what opera, ballet and basketball have to do with an engine failure on a Qantas flight out of Canberra the other day—and that is what you are expecting us to mix together. Some people are confused about what an exit portal is and what an entry portal is. I am not, but I am certainly worried about what is proposed. I think it would be nice to get an explanation of why you cannot put sport into an appropriate area and instead have to lump it in with tractors, sheep, cattle, trains and God knows what else. Does that indicate a downgrading of the importance of agriculture, transport, airline safety and a whole range of other things in the eyes of the government?

There is a whole range of other things. What about the conflict that is occurring up in Gladstone Harbour? We would like to know what that is all about. I would love to get free tickets to the opera and that. Given that my mother was a ballet teacher, I want to go to the ballet when Alan Ramsey's daughter Tosca makes it to the Australian Ballet. She is on her way. When she gets there, I want to be there. Alan and Laura will have something to be really proud of there.

As for the sense of importance, you have lost the plot by putting sport and the arts in with trucks, trains and transport. They did try to stick it in with DAFF, but we managed to win that little battle—DAFF is a full program all day. They tried to stick it on the end of that. These portfolios have no home. You have shopped them around the various committees and we have been lumbered with them. I would like an explanation of that. Does it mean you do not consider the portfolios which the rural and transport committee deals with to be important?

Sport and the arts are important portfolios. It is a great privilege to be the minister for sport. I suppose you would get sick of going to the various boxes for the various games, but it is all part of the privilege. We really want to spend as much time as we can at estimates on the things that we in the committee can directly relate to, and we do not have a relationship with sport and the arts, even though they are important.

We think it is equally important to find out what went wrong with the engine on that QantasLink flight to Sydney the other day. I am sure the lady who took the video through the window when the engine stopped would like to know what caused that to happen, and we would like to be given enough time to find answers to all those questions.

We had a hearing last night where the might of the CSIRO came and gave evidence which I thought was embarrassing. Senator Waters was there. They said they have 452 scientists backing them, but they could not give us some simple answers on some of the propositions around water extraction for coal seam gas. We would like to be able to spend all the time that we can drilling into those sorts of issues. I think it is fair to say that the committee itself was pretty surprised—wouldn't you say, Senator Waters?—that we got landed with sport and ballet. These are important issues, but we wish there was a way that the government, in its wisdom, could find a more suitable home for them and give us more space for the things that we have dealt with for some years as a committee.

We recently put out a unanimous report, which the committee is very proud of, on the issues around coal seam gas. In what I call political blackmail, which I realise is strong language, Tony Windsor—God bless him; he is a smart bushie—got $200 million to go to some sort of overview of the issues around mining and coal seam gas. We put the appropriate people under scrutiny last night as to why it was $200 million, $50 million of which is going to the states and $150 million of which is going to a process which nobody knows anything about—they have no idea. The people who were there said: 'We've set up an expert committee to give advice as to how we're going to spend the $150 million. We don't know what we're going to spend it on, nor do we know why we made it $150 million.' But that shut down the objection to the mining tax by getting the support of Mr Windsor, and good luck to Mr Windsor; he is a pretty good horse dealer. But we would still like to know the ins and outs of that.

These things take time at estimates. I think this allocation of portfolios is a phoney proposition. It means you are either lowering our powers of scrutiny or you are lessening the importance of the arts and sport. I am afraid that we are at a loss to understand it. My view is that this debate is quite appropriate because some of the decisions are obviously made on the advice of some bureaucrat who would not know which end of a cow is the exit portal. I think you ought to reconsider this. I think it is an insult to rural Australia, agriculture and the transport industry to lump sport and the arts in their portfolio areas when one of the most important tasks of the Senate is to put government funding under scrutiny through the estimates process.

I had better not say what I really think about this because I will have to withdraw it. But this is blowing in the face of agriculture. It is downgrading the signal to all the hardworking farmers out there who want to know where we are going with the various issues around agriculture. Where are we going to end up—with the intermingling of mining? What are we going to do with the 20 million tonnes of salt that is going to come out of coal seam gas if we allow it to? This is not an issue at this time for the federal government. But the Queensland government, against the advice of their own bureaucrats, went ahead and gave British Gas, Santos and Origin permission to mine up there with no idea at all of the consequences for the environment. They knew that there were going to be consequences, but they gave that permission not knowing how to solve the problem of what you do with four million tonnes of salt from one tenement, which is a pile of salt 25 kilometres long. How do you store that safely, given what has just happened in Queensland with the rain and floods? They want to store it in agricultural areas, allegedly in safe storage.

We want to know the answers to all this stuff, and the one process we have available to us is to ask questions at estimates. I am sure the government does not know the answer either. In a preliminary hearing yesterday the CSIRO, backed by 452 scientists, did not know the answer. With great respect to the minister and the government, I think this is an insult to agriculture. I think it is an insult to infrastructure and transport, safe flying, biosecurity and a whole range of other issues that our committee deals with very fervently—and, to the credit of the committee, very rarely do we have a dissent­ing report. When we were in government we gave our government as much stick as we give the present government based on the merits of the issue, because we do not like to play politics with people's livelihoods. But, Minister, with this decision, you are playing politics with people's livelihoods.