COAL SEAM GAS

The Hon. M. PARNELL (15:41): I want to speak today about an issue which some may think is not very important or relevant to South Australia but which in fact is of critical importance to our state, and I am speaking about coal seam gas, its impact on farming communities and the grassroots Lock the Gate movement it spawned in the Eastern States. In South Australia, the language is about unconventional gas, which includes coal seam gas, tight gas and shale gas, all of which require hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract the gas, which is predominantly methane; you could also add underground coal gasification to that list.

Fracking involves pumping large volumes of water and chemicals into the earth at high pressure to force open or fracture rock cracks, allowing gas to escape to the surface. The extraction technique was banned in France, and it has created environmental issues in Queensland, New South Wales and the United States after freshwater aquifers had become polluted. Many of us were horrified to see the US documentary Gasland a few years ago, seeing water that was able to be physically set alight and finding out about the impacts of this activity on agricultural land.

In fact, as recently as last week the ABC Four Corners program Gas Leak! revealed not only a hasty and incompetent process in the approval of thousands of coal seam gas wells in Queensland in 2010 but also a potentially illegal process. Some of the approvals that featured in the Four Corners program have now been forwarded to the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission. This referral was made by Drew Hutton, the national president of the Lock the Gate Alliance, and Simone Marsh, the government whistleblower who features in the program. I also understand that this referral to the Crime and Misconduct Commission has been formally backed by the Queensland Premier, Campbell Newman.

Last week in Adelaide, I was pleased to attend a public meeting where these issues were raised and put in a South Australian context. In town was Sarah Moles, the secretary of the Lock the Gate Alliance, and she spoke about the campaign interstate and some of the successes it has had. This is not a new issue for the Greens: we have been working on this for some years, including involvement with the Lock the Gate movement and other community-based campaigns, to insist on best practice environmental protection.

Predictably, this has resulted in us backing moratorium calls because the science and the assessment have been so poor that we should not be allowing any more of this activity until these issues are resolved, including the big picture issues, such as the impact of unconventional gas on climate change. My colleague Senator Larissa Waters some 15 months before the government finally moved had introduced into the federal parliament a bill to provide for an EPBC Act trigger for the impacts coal seam gas has on underground water. The campaign has broad support from many unlikely sources. To the best of my knowledge Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones is not a card-carrying member of the Greens, but he also is a vocal critic of coal seam gas, especially because of its impact on farmland.

In the South Australian context, just before Christmas, the government released its road map to unconventional gas, and this why farmers everywhere in South Australia need to be very worried. I refer to the Stock Journal of 13 December last year, where they explain it as follows:

A new map outlining South Australia's potential for unconventional gas exploration was released by the State Government yesterday. It outlined locations for potential gas mining in the Lower, Mid, Upper and Far North regions, South East, Eyre and Yorke peninsulas, West Coast and Adelaide Hills.

You have to wonder what is left of South Australia if they are the areas that are potentially to be opened for unconventional gas.

The government, I think, knows that it is in for a fight. Chris Russell, writing in The Advertiser on 15 December, wrote about one of the objectives of this road map being preparing the way for public awareness. The article quotes Barry Goldstein, the executive director of the Energy Division of the Department of Resources and Energy, as acknowledging that public acceptance will be far trickier in the Otway Basin than it is in the remote Cooper Basin.

My message to the government is that, if it thinks the South Australian community will be as starry-eyed as some of the government ministers about our fossil fuel future, I think it is in for a rude shock. Secondly, if the government rides roughshod over the farming communities of South Australia, as has happened interstate, it is in for a fight; and, thirdly, if the government pretends that the world's climate can cope with unlimited extraction and burning of fossil fuels, it will be roundly condemned by this generation and the next.

An honourable member interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Brokenshire.