Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's with great pleasure that I stand with my colleague Senator Cadell to support a motion on this matter. It's for the seventh time. It's absolutely ludicrous that the government doesn't want to hear the voices of the communities that are coming to us to express their concerns about the way that this very important infrastructure is being rolled out. The government tries to portray this as the opposition not wanting to see the development of the grid to support renewable energy and the growth in energy needs across the country. That is simply not true. That is a lie, in fact. That is not what this motion is seeking to do.

We know, because we have been talking to people—to farmers, fishers and Indigenous communities—that there are a whole range of issues in relation to equity and fairness and the terms under which lands and seas are accessed for the development of this infrastructure. We know that because we've been having the conversations. We've been talking to them. The government know there's a problem, because they've instituted their own little in-house secret-squirrel inquiry. But they don't want the voices that are talking to that process to be heard publicly, which they would be through a Senate inquiry. Communities could come and give evidence to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee. Their voices could be heard in public, rather than in secret-squirrel meetings behind closed doors where their complaints can't be heard, and the full weight and support of this chamber could be brought to the government to assist it with the solutions.

We know that the government is looking for solutions. We know that that's the case, and we want to see fair terms for access to these lands and seas and for those who are impacted. We've been told in a separate inquiry—the government's inquiry that it asked the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth to do into creating Australia as a green export superpower—that Indigenous communities get paid a lower rate in Queensland than graziers do. Tell me how that's fair. Why can't this chamber play a role in fixing that?

Off Gippsland, about 20,000 tonnes of fish come out of the South East Trawl Fishery. Ninety per cent of that fishery is impacted by the zones that have currently been declared. How do we fairly manage the impact on that fishery and on the supply of seafood from that fishery into Sydney and Melbourne regional markets? How do we make sure that's properly managed? How do we do that? The government is not prepared to say, but they don't want the seafood industry to be able to come and talk to parliament or to the Senate openly about what they think the solutions are, which we might then be able to recommend to the parliament and, therefore, to the government. They don't want to have that conversation. Senator Cadell has talked about the circumstances off Port Stephens in New South Wales, and we've seen plenty of publicity recently about the concerns that the local community has there, from a whole range of perspectives. It's not just fisheries, and it's not just fisheries off Gippsland either. It's tourism. It's a whole range of other things.

The terms of reference for this inquiry are written in that constructive mode. How do we make sure that the way in which these energy companies and those proposing these major pieces of infrastructure access the land and seas is done in a fair way and on just terms? You would expect that that's what would happen as a matter of course, but we know that there are a whole range of dodgy type contracts that are being offered out there to farmers in particular. We know that there are issues with determining the routes along which these major pieces of infrastructure will be built. Senator Cadell has talked about the scale of some of this infrastructure, and we haven't even started talking about the potential impacts on the environment and on environmental lands, which this inquiry also wants to look at. I can't understand why the Greens aren't interested in this. I genuinely can't understand it. I say that because, in Queensland, you have the circumstance where you've got over a thousand hectares of koala habitat impacted by the development of a major piece of infrastructure. Try and cut down a tree for any other reason anywhere in the country.