Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to make a contribution to the debate on the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Bill 2016. This bill will allow the government to provide below-cost loans for infrastructure for northern Australia. As Senator Moore has already pointed out the many aspects of the bill, I will go into some of the concerns that we have with this bill.

For years people have been dreaming about the development of the north. They see massive riches pouring out of the north. I sometimes look at it as: 'Let's circle the wagons, and let's go off and start developing the north!' I am desperately concerned that we will make the same mistakes that we have made in south, where we have seen overclearing and a massive loss of species, where Australia has had the highest rate of extinction of mammalian species in the world—not a record that any of us should be proud of. There are feral species, weeds and the destruction of our environment, all the while adding to the most destructive impact currently affecting the world—that is, climate change.

We have looked at the north. We have seen the massive amount of water, and we have said, 'All that water is wasted going out to sea.' Of course, all that water is not being wasted; it is part of the natural environment and is contributing to the ecosystem very substantially. I will come back to that point in a minute.

One of the key things that we must remember when we are talking about development in northern Australia is that a large amount of this land is owned and managed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and that, to date, Aboriginal people have had very little benefit from the development that has occurred anywhere across Australia, both in the south, in massive development, and in the north. When you look at the outcomes for Aboriginal people when we are talking about trying to improve some of those key targets when we are trying to close the gap—if you look at some of the research that has come out of the Pilbara, for example, where there has been massive wealth generated—the indicators for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have not improved. They have not benefited from the wealth that has been generated from that area. The issues—the massive disadvantage, the gap in life expectancy, poor health outcomes, poor employment outcomes—have not substantially improved.

While there are now better training programs in some areas, noticeably it is very often Aboriginal people who come off employment first when people start retrenching workers. There have not been long-term gains for those communities, nor has employment been guaranteed. We still constantly see fly-in fly-out workers—again, not Aboriginal communities. You will get people who come in and say, 'Oh, we're going to employ a whole number of Aboriginal people in this particular project,' completely not mentioning the time lines that are needed to make sure that we have a skilled Aboriginal workforce that can participate in that particular employment. There are some exceptions—I will grant that, and very strongly—but in many cases there are not. So, once again, Aboriginal communities miss out.

When we are talking about northern Australia, although there is some disruption to our natural environment up there, it is in much better condition, by and large—and I will come back to that too—than the south of Australia. Northern Australia has incredible natural history. By some estimates, northern Australia covers around 40 per cent of Australia's land mass. It represents one of the largest natural areas remaining on earth. It is 3,000 kilometres from east to west, and it includes a landscape that varies from tropical savannas to rainforests and deserts. Wetlands in the north are spectacular, and of course the wetlands in Kakadu are internationally renowned. It also has the most beautiful coastal environment and marine areas, which are productive and are affected, as we know, by development that occurs on land and in water—because we are also talking about aquaculture in the north as well as exploitation of oil and gas resources, which obviously occurs in the north. When we go back to the value and the beauty of the natural heritage up there, these are something that even the government's own northern Australia green paper acknowledged when it said:

The north is home to seven World Heritage Sites with outstanding natural and scientific values: the Great Barrier Reef, the Wet Tropics of Queensland, Kakadu National Park, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Ningaloo Coast, Purnululu National Park and the Riversleigh Australian Fossil Mammal Site.

All of these are world renowned sites and obviously need to be protected, and they are in themselves a source of revenue for northern Australia.

We have to also remember that we are talking about an environment that can be significantly damaged by development if it is not done in a sustainable manner. We are starting to see this in northern Australia. We are starting to see mammal species being lost from environments and from ecosystems. We are starting to see species becoming endangered where they were not in the past.

And we are still getting to the bottom of what is causing the threat to these species. Is it the fact that the fire regimes have changed? Is it the feral species that we are increasingly seeing predate on native species? There is a range of issues at stake here. Is it because we are clearing more and changing the way the patterns of our vegetation are working and protecting fewer of those species? We do not want to build on our unenviable reputation and No. 1 spot in terms of loss of mammalian species—extinction of mammalian species. If we start losing these species from northern Australia, we will certainly climb even higher with that number, particularly of those critical-weight mammal species that have been lost from Australia. We will certainly soon be adding to that list.

People have been talking for years and years about developing the North. I am really concerned that what we are seeing at the moment when talking about the development of the North is largely more of the same. We only have to look at Adani and the fact that we want the road and rail infrastructure to go in there to see that we are not looking very much further than beyond the end of our nose with regard to developments in northern Australia. Largely, it is more of the same. We look up there and see water resources that we want to exploit.

If we look at Western Australia and what was happening in the fifties and sixties about developing the north, we see that we stuck a dam on the Ord River. We had stage 1 of the Ord going for a very long time. It has been well known as a white elephant, and now we are starting on stage 2. We have invited investors and we are going to start a sugar industry up there—again! Just last week, they were saying: 'We can't start that bit until we get stage 3. It's not economic.' So it is more of the same! In fact, literally all my life I have been hearing how good the Ord is going to be one day. 'One day it is going to be the food bowl, not only of Australia but it will help to be the food bowl of the world.'

We keep claiming that the North can be the food bowl of the world because it has all these water resources. Yes, there is lot of water up there but it is seasonal, for a start. It is not wasted. When it goes into those river systems, it is part of an ecosystem. The Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce clearly showed that there is not that abundance that people keep thinking is there; that we can shove it into dams and then water half of the North. We have fragile ecosystems up there. Short-sighted development like what we have done in the south—promoting extractive industries, particularly when they are fossil fuel extractive industries—are more of the same, and they will be redundant in the not-too-distant future.

The report from the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce said:

However, contrary to popular belief, water resources in the north are neither unlimited, nor wasted.

Equally, the potential for northern Australia to become a food bowl is not supported by the evidence. There is evidence to suggest that there are some water resources that can be exploited. I am not denying that, but not on the huge scale that some people dream about. It is just not the right thing to be doing up there. Yes, mosaic, small-scale agriculture developments can work, and in fact are working, in some places in the North. But putting a dam on the Fitzroy is not the way to go.

Last week, the cat was let out of the bag; the government was clearly talking about wanting to exploit the Fitzroy River yet again. Some people are still dreaming of a dam on that river. I have fought that dam twice and I will be fighting it again if they start to move to put a dam on that river, because it would disrupt the ecosystem. It is not the right thing to do. Small, off-site storage—small scale and localised—may be the way to go, but not that huge infrastructure that is not sustainable, causes huge disruption to the environment and is not supported by many people. Development that does not take into account environmental constraints will be a failure.

This is a fundamental difference between the Greens and other parties, where they just see more of the same as the way to go when, in fact it is not. We do have an opportunity to get it right in the North We have an opportunity to put in place developments that will take us through the 21st century and into the next and will put us ahead of the rest of the game, if we start investing these resources in a way that is sensitive and that sets us up for the rest of this century and for the next century; if we start picking up proposals that truly renew Australia, such as the Greens propose in Renew Australia, which develops energy sources that are renewable, will be there for a long time and will literally not cost us the earth; and when we start factoring the impacts of climate change into the decision making for the North. This is absolutely essential. If we keep proceeding with developments that contribute to climate change, for a start, that will be a disaster. If we continue to invest in such infrastructure, we are setting up a massive, basically loss-making enterprise. Not only is this contributing to climate change; it is a really dumb idea.

We need to be investing so that we are making sure the North is provided with the opportunity to take part in the new economy. As I said, we have the opportunity to make sure that Australia, and particularly the North, is fundamentally set up so that we can take a place and be leaders in the new economy. We should not be plundering our environmental resources. We do not want short-term gain here that will, in the long term, cost future generations, particularly where we can make sure we are putting in place developments that most benefit Aboriginal communities, look beyond the end of our nose and make sure that we have projects in place that are truly renewable and sustainable and will last us for the long term.

It is particularly important that we protect Australia's water resources. I noted above the findings of the Northern Australia Land and Water Task Force. I would also like to quote from a recent paper on irrigation in northern Australia, which says that the environmental characteristics of northern Australia are not suitable for irrigation. It says:

Taken together, these environmental characteristics—infertile soils, extreme heat, and highly variable and intense rainfall—suggest the north is not well suited to farming at all, let alone the temperate dryland cash crops like wheat and barley, which are grown predominantly during the southern winter and spring.

I know that there are other crops that we are talking about for the North. Again, if we are very sensitive, we can put these in certain areas, but not the massive style of developments that some people came to the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia with. Some of those people had good ideas—they were good ideas. Some you would call carpetbaggers. That is what they are called out bush—they are called carpetbaggers. Some of them were literally carpetbaggers, and you should have heard some of them. Some of them, as I said, were good, but some were not.

That is what drives some people when they eye the North. They are there to make a whole heap of money, and they say it will be a food bowl. They have been saying this for generations. It cannot be the type of food bowl that some of these developers are talking about, with massive clearing, which not only potentially will not be sustainable because it will be affected by climate change—we are already seeing different seasons in the North, as we are in the south—but will impact, for example, on our marine environments. We are already seeing that. There is no better example than some of the impact that land development has had on the Great Barrier Reef. I am sure my colleague Larissa Waters will be talking about that shortly

We have to be much more sensitive about the way that we look at the North and talk about its development. Because of that, we believe that the decision making needs to better reflect environmental principles. The decisions about investment and infrastructure need to take these into account. We want an economy that is driven by clean energy, because it is better for the environment and it is where the future is: a new, clean economy. We have a vision for environmentally sustainable development in northern Australia, and this approach can and should include agriculture where it can be done sustainably without causing an impact on our important water resources and also where it does not involve large-scale clearing and is done in a planned way. Our plan Renew Australia is a plan for 90 per cent renewable energy by 2030 and doubling our energy efficiency. This is an area that we should be looking at.

This proposed legislation needs to be amended, and that is why we have proposed a number of amendments. For a start, we do not agree that the facility should be allowed to be used for investment in fossil fuels or nuclear projects. These are not sustainable projects. They are the technology of the past, and in the not-too-distant future they will be dinosaur projects. They will be stranded infrastructure, basically. So why would we be investing in roads or rail or committing Australia's resources to develop technology that is of the past? We should not be. We need to make sure that these projects, under such a facility as this approach, undergo cost-benefit analysis. We think this should be an obvious step. But it needs to be a full cost-benefit analysis, not one that does not include full social cost and full environmental cost. We need to be making sure we do that.

We also do not want to see the government delegating EPBC approvals for projects funded under this facility. We have fought the government's delegations for EPBC approvals, and my colleague Senator Waters will address this issue more fully when she speaks on this bill very shortly. We have amendments to this bill to make sure that approval cannot be delegated, because it is important that these sorts of projects have adequate scrutiny. We will also move amendments to make sure that the projects funded by this facility must be in line with ecological sustainable development principles. We believe that these amendments are critical to making sure we are protecting northern Australia from the mistakes of the past.

I will just add that while we have very strong concerns with this bill—and, as I said, we will be looking at amendments in a number of areas—we do not, despite these concerns, have objections to the amendments the government has just circulated in terms of Western Australia. We never saw why the boundary was different in Western Australia compared with other states, so we do not have objections to the government moving that amendment so that at least Western Australia is treated fairly, like the other states. Thank you.