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Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Page: 4480

Senator MILNE (Tasmania—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (15:52): I rise to respond to an answer the minister gave in relation to coal seam gas. I find what is going on in Australia with coal seam gas fascinating because there is an assumption, which keeps getting trotted out all over the place, that coal seam gas is cleaner than coal as an energy source and, therefore, we should embrace a massive expansion of coal seam gas.

When I asked the minister today if she could tell the Senate whether coal seam gas extracted in Australia is less greenhouse gas intensive than black coal on a life cycle analysis, she could not answer the question. That is because the work has not been done here in Australia on the greenhouse gas intensity of coal seam gas on life cycle analysis. It is about time that it was. I am one of those people who has said strongly that gas internationally has to be seen at the maximum as a bridging fuel. In Australia we need to move straight to renewables and people looking at gas need to see it as an interim measure and not as a long-term investment. Because certain companies see the profits that they think they can get from coal seam gas, tragically they have completely overrun rural communities in Australia. These communities are outraged at what has been going on, as is the medical fraternity which is out there very strongly warning of the health impacts of coal seam gas.

The Greens will bring in legislation which will give farmers the right to say, 'No, you can't come on to the property to extract coal seam gas.' I will be very interested to see what the coalition does. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, has got into quite a pickle on this. Last week he said that farmers should say no, but he has spent the past 24 hours back-peddling and trying to dig himself a place to hide from that issue. We need to have Australian studies on the greenhouse gas intensity of coal seam gas from whoa to go, including fugitive emissions from the areas where these gas wells are being drilled and fugitive emissions from not only those leaking wells but also the pipes. We need to have the energy input analysed from the reverse osmosis of the billions of litres of produced water. We also need to look at the energy embodied in the transport of the gas to the liquefication facilities, the liquefication itself and the transportation overseas. Once you start looking at the greenhouse gas emissions and the intensity of all that, you will find that all these people who claim that coal seam gas is cleaner than coal are in fact wildly exaggerating any benefits. When you take away the disbenefit of loss of agricultural production, you will show that coal seam gas is not the great investment that so many people claim it is.

It is time we took food and water security seriously. I have argued in here until I am blue in the face that you cannot deal with these issues separately. You need to look at the water crisis, the food crisis, the energy crisis and the climate crisis all at once and not take actions that lead to perverse outcomes if you deal with only one of those and not the rest at the same time. Farming communities across Australia are quite rightly saying they are under enormous pressure. They are under pressure from the dollar; they are under pressure because they are losing land to the expansion of urban areas. They are losing because they cannot make a decent farm gate price anymore because of the impact of the supermarkets in Australia and competition from imported food, which is coming into this country having been grown under different environmental conditions and lower wages elsewhere. They are under pressure all over the place and now they find that the gas industry is marching onto their properties with no consideration, no consultation in many cases and completely disrupting life on their land—not to mention the impacts on the Great Artesian Basin. We still cannot get an answer from the government or anybody else on the impacts of this massive expansion of coal seam gas on water availability in Australia and the Great Artesian Basin.

I am glad the minister is going to come back because we want to know on what basis these claims are being made. Are the claims being made just on the basis of industry or have there been any independent reports? Are these reports based in Australia or overseas? I would not mind betting that most of them will come from companies that have done some sort of studies elsewhere. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.