Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to add my comments to those of my colleagues Senator Nash, Senator Williams and Senator McKenzie. I think it is also important at this juncture to acknowledge others who, although at times I might fight absolutely virulently against, have had a part in this too. I would like to commend the work on this issue that Tony Windsor has done. I think it is important that an issue such as coal seam gas rise above a partisan political position and become something that represents a joint concern.

I also acknowledge the concerns that are held by the Greens, and I also commend the Labor Party for their approval of this appropriation so that we can try to get somewhere and move forward with this—that tortured term 'moving forward'!

Just in the last fortnight, I have spent some time at the University of Southern Queensland with Professor Jan Thomas and Professor Steven Raine, discussing precisely how to do a greater investigation of some of the quandaries around coal seam gas. We have had a period where a portion of the Condamine River has basically been expressing gas. Gas has been bubbling up, almost champagne-like, and people are starting to ask where this comes from and what is causing this. We also had an old well that caught on fire. To be honest, I do not think it would be a coal seam gas well; it was probably more of a research well, and that also raises concerns.

The concerns that everybody has, of course, surround the fact that, when we get to this issue of 'make good', you cannot actually make good. If you get this wrong, that is it. In a town like mine, St George, our water supply that we use for domestic use comes from underground; it is bore water. If you compromise that in some way then we do not have a water supply in town. We have river water that is used on gardens, but the water supply for the town is bore water. The water supply for stock use, which supports the cattle industry, is bore water. You have all the intricacies that are there with something that is so complicated. You cannot compromise it or you will destroy it.

To give you an example, we are finding that some of the water that they have been bringing up in test samples —they can test the last time it saw light; I do not understand it, but there is an isotope that signifies how long it has been away from light—has been away from sunlight for 10 million years. That means you are borrowing from a resource that was put in place 10 million years ago. That is an interesting sort of bank account to be reaching into. Obviously you are borrowing from a weather event of 10 million years ago. This means you have to be absolutely focused on the fact that the resource you are using is an extremely precious one. Water runs downhill. If you take water from the bottom of an aquifer, quite obviously things are going to percolate and permeate down. Whether that happens overnight or over hundreds of years I do not know; that is for research to find out.

So I hope that in this appropriation funds are moved to a university that is proximate to that area—that is, the University of Southern Queensland, which is in the middle of that area—and has the capacity to deal with issues such as this and that, in so doing, people are able to go out into the field that is literally at their back door. I know that the farmers east of the Condamine River have a facility that is not down in Brisbane, partially sponsored by the mining companies. There is one in Brisbane, but the mining companies are among the people that support it, which might call into question the independence. I am sure they wouldn't not be independent, but it could possibly call into question how it is perceived in regard to their independence. I think it is very important to have one that is unambiguously independent—that is, it is fully funded by the government—and is in situ in the area, which is the Darling Downs. That would be the University of Southern Queensland. So I recommend that the government look at utilising the facilities that are present at the University of Southern Queensland, because they are on board with this and are fully aware of it. If we want to try to dispel some of the fears that are there then the best place to do it is one that is in the backyard of the people who hold—and rightly hold—the greatest fears around the uncertainties of coal seam gas.

We acknowledge that the coal seam gas industry is going to continue, and I suppose that is where there is a difference between us and other political parties. We are not calling for a moratorium on coal seam gas, because of the vast investment that is already in place. We do say that there are areas of prime agricultural land where coal seam gas should not be. Prime agricultural land is seen in its most evident form once you get east of the Condamine River, Haystack Plains, Jimbour Plains and Breeza Plains. These areas are unambiguous. They are a very small portion of the Australian agricultural footprint but they are quite obviously prime agricultural lands. If you want to look at the economic advantage of it—I find the process of that argument rather insidious—then you have to look at the forward cash flow of these assets over thousands of years, because that is how long they will be here for. As assets, they go for tens of thousands of years, and if you compromise those assets you cannot get them back.

Prime agricultural land is the most vital asset. To be honest, if we need another Harbour Bridge we can build one. If we need another Opera House then, if we really want to, we can build one. If we need another Stock Exchange, we can set one up. But, if we need another section of prime agricultural land, we cannot get it. The only prime agricultural land that is present on the planet is what is here now—that is it. So it is the most precious of resources; it is the most limited of resources. Even if you want to compare it with gold, there is a vast capacity for a greater production of gold. All you have to do is go deeper and increase your refining techniques so that there are greater mechanisms to go to 0.5 grams per tonne. There is more gold out there. It is deeper and more remote but, as a resource, it is present. The only thing that determines whether people are willing to get that resource is price. If the price of gold goes up then vastly more resource becomes viable to mine it. But it does not matter where the price goes with prime agricultural land: it is a totally and utterly limited quantity. Therefore, it should be absolutely at the forefront of what we believe is important.

I heard that one of the biggest issues discussed at the start of the APEC conference was food security. In Australia we say: 'Oh, food security is a myth. We don't have to worry about it. It's not really important. It's not an issue for us.' Well, it is. It is an issue for us because it is an issue for the globe. If it is an issue for the globe, it is an issue for us. Therefore, we have to see things through the prism of whether they are a threat to food security. Are they also a threat to Australian food security? And is Australia doing its diligent most to make sure that it protects its food-producing asset? We need to make sure that, no matter what aspersions may be cast our way, we are basically given latitude to have the same sense of parochial protection for our farming assets that every other place in the world has for theirs. The blessing that Australia has is that we have never had a period of privation, except for the time shortly after European settlement when people starved. But other countries have had privation and, therefore, they see the food security issue as front-and-centre important.

The next point is quiet enjoyment, which Senator Nash spoke about. Quiet enjoyment, of course, comes from leasing contracts. When you rent or lease a house, people must allow you the quiet enjoyment of your residence. It is something that we also want to make sure continues in this area. It is another issue that I think some of this $150 million can be used to look at. There are social and economic effects and the tolerances involved there in how close mining can go to suburban areas. We know full well that currently there are coal seam gas exploration licences for the centre of Sydney held by Dart Energy. How insane is that? How is that going to work in Annandale? It works well politically for us because it has given us a great new vessel of people who are just as angry as some of the people in regional Australia are, and we need to get them on side. Unfortunately, the ridiculous granting of exploration licences in the Sydney Basin has done precisely that. There are also exploration licences on the north coast. If someone says, 'Where is coal seam gas?' then the answer is, 'It is where coal is.' Where is coal? It is in a vast section of Australia. We know it is in South Australia. The industry has not started there but it is on its way. It is everywhere you go. That is why it is so important to get this right. We are not talking about the Water Act, which is what this appropriation is about. We are talking about quiet enjoyment. We are talking about the protection of prime agricultural land. We must look at the return that goes back to the landholder and to the area.

In a meeting once more on coal seam gas that we had last Friday just to show you how much moment this issue has, all the mayors from the Paroo, the Bulloo, Maranoa, Balonne, my area, Dalby, Toowoomba and Stanthorpe got together. They could bring up any issue they wanted. We had federal ministers and state ministers there. Guess what issue they brought up? It was coal seam gas—right there. That was it. Coal seam gas was issue No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and then other issues. Why? Because we acknowledge the wealth that is coming and going to come from this resource. APPEA states that about $80 billion will flow to the state governments but about $260 billion by tax revenue will flow to the federal government coffers and the increase to the size of the Australian economy will be in excess of half a trillion dollars. That gives you an understanding of just how massive this industry is.

What we are looking at in our area is: what is actually coming back to us? If you look at the Warrego Highway as an example of a highway for which the traffic is a great benefaction to the wealth of our nation that is literally going to bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue, hundreds of billions of dollars to the growth of our economy, and ask, 'What sort of investment is being made in this infrastructure?' It is an abomination. It is literally turning into something that would suit a road in Central Africa but not a major arterial road to one of our greatest resource provinces in Australia. The reason why it is falling to pieces is the traffic on it. The traffic is absolutely overwhelming. If you go down James Street in Toowoomba, it is quite scary at times. The number of trucks that are going through there as you turn right across the oncoming traffic is really something to behold, not one semi but multiple. We are talking thousands of movements a day going through a major town. You cannot do that. We have got to make sure that this investment goes back to the Toowoomba bypass. We really need a four-lane highway to Dalby, because that is the amount of traffic that is on the road. If people say, 'That's ridiculous', then we should say: 'Look at the money you are getting out of the joint. Don't you think that it warrants some sort of investment back into the area?'

I want to do a comparative analysis to assuage any belief because it always gets thrown: as soon as you ask for money, it is morally justified if it happens in an urban environment; do it in a regional area and, apparently, it becomes pork barrelling. Let us look at a comparative analysis of other areas, other parts of the world. Fortunately, I was invited to the United States about a month or so ago and I looked at the investment in a comparative way in Texas to what is happening in our area. The East Texas gasfields, which are the source of the wealth—I know they talk about West Texas barrels of crude but the East Texas oilfields is where the wealth of Texas came from—is an area that goes between Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth and has a population similar to Australia's and an economy that is bigger than ours. It was built on the wealth of six billion barrels of oil equivalent of resource. With all these places—there is 14 inches of rain in areas, so it is not that it is not a great agricultural sector; there is intensive livestock which utilises the providence of other areas—a massive amount of wealth has been reinvested into that area from the wealth that came from that area. They did that and also the University of Texas—one of the top 50 universities in the world; better than any of our universities, unfortunately—on six billion barrels of oil. The investment is on multiple layers and goes to the benefit of the United States of America and, most specifically, to the benefit of the people who live in the area where the resource comes from.

If we look at what the resource worth is of the Surat Basin, that is three billion barrels of oil equivalent—with the Bowen Basin it makes five billion barrels of oil equivalent. So you have got five billion barrels of oil equivalent as opposed to six billion barrels of oil equivalent which built up the wealth in Texas. So these people have every right to say: 'What's coming back to us? What wealth is flowing back to us? What wealth is flowing back into these regions?' Do not tell us about a new freeway in Brisbane or a new electric railway line in Sydney. Show us on the roads; show us in the hospitals. For the first time at Dalby we have had in excess of $1 billion worth of expected housing development. The wealth has to start flowing back for the development of the infrastructure because that is an overwhelming goal, I think, across all parties. We have visionary people either side of the chamber and we want to develop new areas. We want to see the providence of a nation not just in the expansion of the status quo but in the development of new areas—that can be Dalby, Kununurra or Alpha—things that show that we are taking the next step and we are going to be better placed. These are the things that we need to do.

We can look at the population centres of what this wealth supports, just to show the expansion. In 1872 there were 1,000 people in Dallas Fort Worth, like Weipa, except Weipa is bigger. It was a small town. The population of Dallas Fort Worth now is 6.2 million. It goes to show what happens when you have the objects of government basically investing where they make their money and reinvesting back in those areas. What they have delivered is an economy that would be slightly smaller than California's but bigger than Australia's. That is the sort of thing that we can do as a nation if we want to.

Quite obviously the landowners are getting absolutely ripped off in Australia about this. It was an asset that they formerly owned. Let's get this on the record. Hydrocarbon materials were vested in the landholder. Oil, gas, coal was vested in the landholder. It was excised from the landholder in Queensland in 1915 with the Petroleum Act to protect us from the Kaiser. We beat the Kaiser but they never gave the asset back, so it was stolen. When you take something without paying for it, it is stolen. In 1953 it was taken from the territories. In 1971 it was excised from South Australia. They only finished excising it off the states in 1983 in New South Wales. So this was an asset of the landholder. The whole principle of why I do not believe in socialism is that socialism says that you can take an asset off an individual vested in the state without payment. I do not believe in that. It is most definitely on the landholder's land—there is no doubt about that. In the United States, the landholder gets up to 25 per cent of the gross at the wellhead. In Australia they are sometimes getting a case of beer or $240. In some instances it is 1,500 bucks and they think they are killing the pig. A fraction of a fraction of one per cent is going back to the landholder in Australia and it should be more.

I read today—it was in one of the papers; it was completely misrepresented—that someone said some landholders are getting $400,000 a month. That is rubbish. There is no landholder in Australia getting $400,000 a month from coal seam gas. The evidence that we got from the Senate inquiry, which was chaired by Senator Heffernan and the terms of reference were written by me for the investigation into coal seam gas, showed that people were not getting that. There are multiple levels we have to look at: a better return to the landholder, vastly greater investigation into the effects of what is happening in the aquifers, protection of prime agricultural land and the maintenance of the quiet enjoyment of people. This is something that I hope we all support across the chamber. It is good to show this on an issue that is important, from the Labor Party's side to the National Party's side to the Liberal Party side to the Greens, and I commend the work of the Independents in the other place. Hopefully we can bring about a better outcome.