Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about coal seam gas and why it is, sadly, only the Greens who are standing with communities to protect our land, our water and our climate from this untested scourge—which is, frankly, the last gasp of the fossil fuel industry. Our most learned research bodies, the CSIRO and the National Water Commission, have said that we do not understand the long-term impacts of coal seam gas mining on our groundwater and our aquifers, and we do not know if we are doing irreversible damage. Likewise, we have no independent science to establish whether coal seam gas is actually cleaner than coal. We simply have industry claims, and the government continues to refuse to do its own independent studies.

The process involves punching holes in aquifers to get to coal seams. A mixture of water and hydraulic fracturing fluids is then blasted in to force the gas out of the seam. Those fracking fluids can contain toxic benzene, toluene, ethylene and xylene—carcinogens—and the very process of fracturing and cracking the seam can release naturally occurring BTEX chemicals. So we have potential contamination of the water table and, with the punching of those holes, we have the potential to change the pressure dynamic, which could lead to a drop in the water table. So we are talking serious threats to our water, which underpins our best farmland. Of course, we have very little good-quality agricultural land in Australia and very little water.

I think it is time for a snapshot of where the other parties stand on coal seam gas, because there has been a bit of talk about it in the last couple of weeks. Suddenly all of the old parties care about coal seam gas because it is going near Western Sydney, where there are about 12 marginal seats, and it is an election year. I think an examination of some of the most recent of these statements is warranted. In New South Wales, the O'Farrell state government has belatedly acted. They have put in a two-kilometre zone for urban areas where coal seam gas mining cannot happen. That is great for urban folk. It is a bit late—but, hey, it is great! What about all of the regional and rural folk that are facing this scourge as well? Sadly, it is too little too late, and it does nothing to protect our food-producing land.

Off the back of that announcement, perplexingly, Paul Howes—factional heavyweight of the Labor Party and head of the Australian Workers Union—said that he thought coal seam gas was great and that the Labor government should remove any barriers that block coal seam gas development and embrace this fuel. That was a couple of days after he called the miners corporate robber barons, so I am a little confused about what exactly Mr Howes thinks of the mining industry.

Federally, Minister Burke has now weighed in, given those marginal seats in Sydney. I am afraid it is a bit rich for him to pretend that all of a sudden he is interested in this issue when he is the minister that has approved every single coal seam gas project that has come across his desk. The federal government often tries to say: 'This is a state issue. It's got nothing to do with us. We'd love to do something about it but we can't.' I am afraid that is just not the case. The Greens have bills to increase the federal environment minister's powers to properly deal with this issue and the government will not have a bar of them.

We have some freelancing backbenchers—Justine Elliot, from the Northern Rivers, has had to stand down from her position of Parliamentary Secretary for Trade to allegedly fight coal seam—