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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Natural Resources Committee: Unconventional Gas (Fracking)

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (16:45): I move:

That the 119th report of the committee be noted.

The Natural Resources Committee's Inquiry into Unconventional Gas (Fracking) in the South East of South Australia was referred by the Legislative Council to the committee on 19 November 2014 on the motion of the Hon. Mark Parnell MLC, as amended by the Hon. Tammy Franks MLC. I interpose to say that most of us in this place remember the things that led up to that in great detail, but I was certainly one who was keen that this matter be examined by a parliamentary committee. I was keen that it be the one of which I happened to be a member. It has been a two-year process, and I hope that members get a chance to have a look at what is a very substantial report.

Pursuant to section 16(1)(a) of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991, the committee has inquired into the potential risks and impacts in the use of hydraulic fracture stimulation (fracking) to produce gas in the South-East of South Australia and, in particular: one, the risks of groundwater contamination; two, the impacts on landscape; three, the effectiveness of existing legislation and regulation, and; four, the potential net economic outcomes to the region and the rest of the state.

After the public call for submissions, the committee received 178 written responses and heard from 66 witnesses. The committee took evidence from Santos, Beach Energy, Cooper Energy, Halliburton, the Department of State Development (DSD), the South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy (SACOME), petroleum industry peak body APPEA, many business people and residents from the South-East of South Australia, and a wide range of witnesses from across the rest of Australia and overseas, including the Hon. Thomas George, Deputy Speaker in the New South Wales parliament and member for Lismore.

The inquiry, one of many conducted on this subject by Australian parliaments in recent years, has attracted a high level of community interest, as the numbers I have just read out would indicate. The interest remained highest throughout the inquiry, with frequent contacts to the committee via email, telephone and even through the post, I think which surprised the staff that people still write letters. These came from members of the public, community groups and industry.

The committee undertook four fact-finding visits, comprising two trips to the South-East, one visit to Queensland and one to the Moomba gas fields in the Cooper Basin. The South-East visits allowed the committee to take evidence from local residents and businesses, and to visit the gas industry sites. The committee planned a third visit to the South-East, intending to hold hearings in Mount Gambier, but as no new witnesses wished to give evidence this visit did not proceed.

The extended visit to Queensland included the towns of Roma, Chinchilla, Dalby and Miles, as members sought to gain an appreciation of how the unconventional gas industry and agriculture might coexist and what community impacts might be expected. The Moomba visit was undertaken by some members of the committee who had not previously been to that region in order to view an unconventional gas well in development. An interim report entitled Inquiry into Unconventional Gas (Fracking) Interim Report was brought down just over 12 months ago on 17 November 2015.

I provide a list of a few energy-related events which have occurred in the time since that interim report was brought down: the Leigh Creek coalmine closure in November 2015; the doubling of domestic gas prices since the completion of gas hubs at Gladstone linking Australia to world market prices; the closure of the Port Augusta coal-fired power station in May; the announcement by BP on 10 October this year that it was withdrawing its plans for exploration and drilling in the Great Australian Bight; and global renewable energy capacity overtaking coal on 25 October 2016; also, very notably, the banning of onshore unconventional gas development in Victoria in October; the new Northern Territory Labor government's decision to ban fracking throughout the Territory; the South Australian statewide power blackout in September this year; and the announcement of the closure in March 2017 of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Victoria.

All of this, and some other events in the 12 months while we have been dealing with the inquiry, helps to give a sense of context in which the inquiry has been conducted. What the committee has repeatedly come back to is the community at the centre of this inquiry and thus to the question of social licence, namely, does the social licence to operate exist which would allow the development of an unconventional gas industry in the South-East of South Australia? Social licence was invoked in many submissions to the inquiry and by a number of witnesses appearing before the committee. The member for Mount Gambier in another place, Mr Troy Bell, summed up social licence in his evidence to the committee, and I quote:

The term 'social licence', or 'social licence to operate', generally refers to a local community's acceptance or approval of a project or a company's ongoing presence. It is usually informal and intangible, and is granted by a community based on the opinions and views of stakeholders, including local populations, Aboriginal groups, and other interested parties. Due to this intangibility, it can be difficult to determine when social licence has been achieved for a project. Social licence may manifest in a variety of ways, ranging from absence of opposition to vocal support or even advocacy, and these various levels of social licence (as well as, of course, the absence of social licence) may occur at the same time among different interested parties.

Under this definition, social licence is given by the local community and other stakeholders when a project has broad ongoing social acceptance. Without proper community engagement, industry may find obtaining social licence more difficult than obtaining legal approvals.

After considering all the evidence available to it, particularly the definition of 'social licence' provided by the member for Mount Gambier, the committee reached the position that social licence does not yet exist for the development of an unconventional gas industry in the South-East of South Australia. This was made starkly apparent by the widespread opposition that we witnessed from the local community. We noted opposition, in spite of there having been a pre-existing conventional gas industry in the South-East for many years, which had undoubtedly provided significant benefits for the community, including employment.

The vast majority of the submissions and representations the committee received were anti-fracking in the South-East. Essentially, the only submissions in favour of unconventional gas development were from companies and organisations engaged by, or heavily involved in, the oil and gas industry. None of the pro-fracking representations, written or verbal, came from representatives of the South-East or residents of that region.

The committee made an effort to understand, from the perspective of local people and businesses, what the economic benefits may be, but despite repeated invitations and approaches to bodies we felt might represent this aspect of the debate, there were no witnesses forthcoming. The committee was surprised that no regional residents or businesses approached us, even in confidence, to express support for the development of an unconventional gas industry in the region.

At the beginning of this inquiry, the committee initially saw its task as recommending whether fracking should be allowed or not, but after two years, the Natural Resources Committee resolved that ultimate responsibility rests not with the committee but with industry, government and the community to decide in partnership.

There is no doubt that if a social licence was to be developed for fracking in the South-East then government, industry and the local community would have to work together to develop that, and that would have to be in stark contrast to the manner in which the proponent, Beach Energy, dealt with the community in the first instance. If that engagement—if you want to call it that—had been much better, then we may not have had this inquiry. There is no doubt that the proponent's activities in the South-East, certainly in the lead-up to a state election, was the worst case example you could give to anybody about how not to engage with the community. However, this inquiry has provided a forum for discussion and the committee has encouraged all stakeholders to have their say.

I commend the report. A couple of members of parliament have looked at it so far and say that it is a significant report. We have covered many of the issues relevant to the South-East, but also relevant to the unconventional gas industry broadly, so I commend the report to members.

I would particularly like to thank all of those who gave their time to assist the committee with the endeavour that we have undertaken in this inquiry. I thank the presiding member, the Hon. Steph Key, for her ongoing leadership and chairmanship ability, which makes the committee a very good, multipartisan committee. I also thank Mr Jon Gee and Mr Peter Treloar from the other place, the Hon. Robert Brokenshire, the Hon. Gerry Kandelaars, and former committee members, Ms Annabel Digance (who replaced Mr Chris Picton) and Mr Chris Picton for their contributions to this inquiry.

I must say that all members have worked cooperatively on this report. It is a pity that over a number of months the government has failed to replace a member to that position, which has been filled by Mr Picton and then Ms Digance. I am sorry that some members of the Labor Party do not see that as an important position to fill.

I would also like to extend thanks to the members from the lower house, Mr Troy Bell, Mr Mitch Williams and Mr Adrian Pederick for the evidence that they gave to our committee and for their general assistance, along with the Hon. Mark Parnell, who took great interest in the work of our inquiry, and also the other members mentioned attended some of the hearings that were held in the regional areas.

In conclusion, I thank our staff: the research officer, Barbara Coddington and the committee secretary and executive officer, Mr Patrick Dupont for their work on the development of what I regard as a very good report, and I commend the report to the house.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (17:01): As one of the committee members, I rise to support the report. This was one of the more detailed inquiries that the committee has made. On the Natural Resources Committee we seem to get quite a few of these complicated and contentious issues to investigate—and this was one of them. I believe that the great thing to come out of this report was that, whether it was Liberal, Labor or Family First, because we were the three parties on this particular committee, it was unanimous—and it is important that we get that on the public record. It was unanimous that because of the fact that there was clearly no social licence in the South-East for fracking for unconventional deep-seam gas that we could not recommend that fracking go ahead.

There was criticism of the South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy (SACOME) just today on the report, and comments from the opposition. I say at the start that the South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy really made a fundamental mistake, or some of their members did, in the way that they did not engage with the community in the South-East from day one. I am forever in here pushing the right to farm legislation, pushing the balance between agriculture and mining and because the act at the moment is so biased towards the mines and energy sector, there is a degree of arrogance within SACOME and some of its members.

I think that is unfortunate and while it continues we are not going to get the best outcomes for the state of South Australia. However, we also have to understand that social licence should be one of the base requirements for projects that have not only an immediate or potentially immediate impact on a community, not only an impact for 10 or 20 years or 30 or 40 years, but a potential impact for centuries. That was an issue that really concerned me because the mining companies that gave evidence were honest in answering a question, and the question was: can you guarantee that fracking is foolproof and there are no risks about contamination of aquifers into the future?

The answer was that none of them could absolutely 100 per cent guarantee that there was not a potential risk in the future. Even if the capping and all of the rehabilitation of those wells, once they were exhausted, was done properly there is always a risk. That, to me, said that the answer to the question of whether or not to frack was no fracking. In fact, I would go as far as to say that in the South-East there should never be any fracking. That does not mean to say that I and Family First do not support deep seam gas extraction in other areas. We have seen it happening at Moomba for decades and it is successful up there. It is about where you frack and where you do not frack. The reality is that there are, in my opinion, too many risks to frack deep seam gas in the South-East.

We do have an opportunity down there. The best resource down there is the people themselves. They are an incredible community, an energetic community and a very experienced community when it comes to agriculture and tourism and the growth in their wine industry. As well, of course, the South-East enjoys generally quite good rainfall. It has good soil types and it has, while sophisticated, a very reliable and high-volume underground water system.

Those combined—the people, the rainfall, the soil type and also the availability of underground water—are equally great opportunities for value-added economic growth into food production and tourism. Of course, the other advantage they have is the geographical location, closer to the big markets of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

I believe that the evidence that was given, again both written and oral evidence (there were 178 written submissions), says that we do need to establish go zones and no-go zones for mining, and we need to incorporate that together with right to farm legislation. South Australia, through aeromagnetic survey work, has established some incredible potential mineral wealth. A lot of that is actually outside our prime agricultural area. At best, we have something like 5 or 6 per cent of our arable land—that is all we have. It is not a lot in a big state like South Australia, and we need to protect that. We should not take unnecessary risks.

I was thinking as we were tabling the report yesterday: as good as Roxby Downs is in my opinion and the great value that it offers South Australia economically in jobs, would any government have agreed to allow the development of Roxby Downs if it was in the South-East, or if it was in the Mid North, or if it was on Yorke Peninsula? I suggest they would not, because the risks would be too high, and the impact on our clean, green food image would be too much of a risk.

Where Roxby Downs is located, it is fair to say that there is a huge and growing industry there that does not impact on that 5 to 6 per cent of prime arable land. I would hope that if it is not this government, the next government will look at go zones and no-go zones when it comes to mining and farming. It would augur well for the growth of agriculture and for mining, and it would stop some of the conflict that is occurring at the moment. It is often for clearly base economic reasons that they want to mine close to Adelaide if the resources are there, even though they could actually get very good viable mines outside of those arable areas.

One of the other issues that I want to put on the record is that no matter how hard we tried as a committee, we could not get any indication of the potential economic opportunities of fracking. None of those companies were able to say to us, 'There will be 1,000'—or 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000—'jobs created during the exploration and then the mining' or that there would be ongoing 500 jobs.

They could not say that, and that made it very difficult for the committee to have confidence in the fact that there would be a net economic benefit to the state in recommending this, as against the situation that this government is happy to capitalise on whenever it suits them, and that is that most of the job growth here—7 per cent compounding over several years—has been in agriculture and value-added agriculture and tourism. Guess what? They are the two key industry sectors of the South-East. We know the jobs that are there now, we know the economic returns—I think it is over $1 billion a year from agriculture—and we know the chances are there for some really strong positive growth.

I finish with this: yesterday the mines and energy minister came out and said—and I took it that he was referring to both the report that we tabled, and also the moratorium that the Opposition Leader, Mr Steven Marshall, the member for Dunstan, came out with yesterday. I can see why he made a recommendation of a moratorium, and I would go one step further, as I said, and say that the South-East be a no-go zone for fracking. Simple as that. Rule that out and let's see some further development up around Moomba and those areas.

What minister Koutsantonis said was that it was a knee-jerk reaction. I will tell you where the knee-jerk reaction was. It was with minister Koutsantonis, when the Labor government of Victoria said they would legislate to stop fracking and ratified, as I understand, by the new Labor government. In the Northern Territory, where they have a moratorium—they are saying no fracking either. It was knee jerk and arrogant for minister Koutsantonis to come out and have a crack at us yesterday for what we did when he knee-jerk reacted and immediately said, 'If they don't want to be in Victoria, come over here.' He said that in the middle of a two-year inquiry by a joint standing committee of this parliament. He was not even prepared to wait for and consider proper consideration of the ramifications of fracking.

Bear in mind, if the fracking in the South-East was to occur—and I acknowledge what my colleague the Hon. John Dawkins said, that ultimately the government can still clearly override anything that this committee has reported on, but they do it at their own peril. They are desperate. So, they may be prepared to take a risk for the short term, but let's not risk the long-term benefits to South Australia of protecting that food and tourism opportunity in the South-East.

I appeal to the government to actually not be so arrogant and to work with the parliament and to work with the people of South Australia. If they were to do that, to start to actually consult, consider and then announce, they might get some social licence. At the moment, almost without exception, there was no social licence by the people who were going to be affected, and the future families, generations, of those people, namely those living in the South-East, who overwhelmingly said, 'The risks are too high; we know the region better than anyone else and we don't want to see fracking in the South-East.' I agree with the absolute majority of the people who put that view forward.

That is why I stand here today to strongly commend this report to the parliament and to appeal to the government to put their energies, together with SACOME and the industry sector—the miners—towards actually giving green flags where it is clear they can go ahead and mine without any major concern, and to let the people of the South-East get on with growing the magnificent opportunities they have delivered in the past and the even better opportunities they will deliver to South Australia in the future, if they do not have to worry about fracking. I commend the report to the house.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (17:14): I would also like to congratulate the Natural Resources Committee on the huge amount of work that they have done over two years in investigating this issue. It is a substantial report, but I would be telling an untruth if I said that I had read it from cover to cover, as we only got it yesterday. It is a substantial body of work, and I am going to read the whole of the report and have a look at all of the findings as well as the recommendations that the committee has come up with, but at first blush it looks to be a comprehensive piece of work.

The Hon. John Dawkins alluded vaguely to some of the origins of this committee, and I will not pretend that I was not a bit disappointed early on when I had a plan for very extensive terms of reference. It was going to be a select committee and I was going to be on it. In the end, we sometimes need to swallow our pride in this place, I accepted that what the residents of the South-East wanted was a parliamentary inquiry; they were not overly fussed about the terms of reference. These are things that occupy the minds of members of parliament rather than members of the community, and whether I was on it or not I do not think kept too many people in the South-East awake at night. So, in the end, my colleague the Hon. Tammy Franks moved the amendments that saw a successful motion get up.

The inquiry was conducted by the Natural Resources Committee, but what I will say is that even back then I had a degree of confidence that the chair of the committee, the Hon. Steph Key, from another place is a fair chair, and I did not really doubt that if people came along with evidence that was useful to the inquiry that there would be no standing on ceremony and throwing people out because they were not closely following the terms of reference. Ultimately, we got a broader inquiry than the terms of reference might suggest, but the primary focus was still on the South-East of the state.

The residents of the South-East had been working for a number of years through a number of different forums to secure this inquiry. I have mentioned in previous speeches in this place that every local council that forms part of that South-East regional group of local councils had called for either a ban, a moratorium or a parliamentary inquiry, so in that light I think the inquiry was certainly worth conducting. I think many people down there are now going to be applauding the response of the Liberal Party in having announced the moratorium, but I will come to that in a second.

As was mentioned by the Hon. John Dawkins, I attended a number of the hearings. I have not worked out whether it was more than half or less than half. Maybe it was about half, but I certainly went on one of the field trips to the South-East, and I appreciated the fact that whilst not being a formal member of the committee I was made very welcome by those members. I heard first-hand a lot of the evidence that locals gave. I think that the summary, as we have heard before from the Hon. John Dawkins and the Hon. Rob Brokenshire, is accurate. Ordinary folk, famers and also industry stakeholders—except those in the mining industry—basically were very nervous about what fracking might mean for their district.

I think there was a groundswell of community opinion against fracking, and in fact even a casual drive through the district to count the number of yellow triangles on gates, where the owners declared that they will 'lock the gate' if mining companies were to turn up, showed that they dominated the landscape. I know that having attended, I think, three of the community ceremonies down there that in most districts the numbers of landholders who were supporting the Lock the Gate campaign were over 90 per cent in almost every case. What is good about local campaigns is that these are people who know their neighbours. They knock on every door and they ask people what they think, and I have no doubt that the overwhelming sentiment in that community was against fracking.

I made a submission to the inquiry. My submission was entitled '21 things I learnt about fracking on my trip to the USA in 2015.' Being a Greens member of parliament, and fond of recycling, I knew that I would be making a submission to the inquiry, so I made a special effort with my travel report. If members remember back in the day when we used to have a travel allowance, we would have to write a report on how those funds were spent. I put a quite substantial report together in relation to my trip to Pennsylvania and New York state, and I knew that I could rejig that to be, not just a report to satisfy our auditing requirements, but also the basis of a good submission to the Natural Resources Committee.

In the interests of time, this potentially being the last week of parliament, I will not go through all of the 21 things that I did learn. As tempting as it is to revisit that trip and the lessons that were learnt—all 21 of them—I will just mention a couple of things. One of them is that, if members ever doubt that the film you sometimes see in documentaries of people setting fire to taps—opening a faucet, as the Americans call it—opening the faucet, putting a match to it and seeing flames come out, if anyone doubts that that is not genuine, I suggest they ask Mr Troy Bell, the member for Mount Gambier, because he was part of an experiment that involved capturing some gas that came out of a garden hose.

The gas was captured in a jar. The jar was sealed and then ceremoniously opened with a lit match nearby. Whilst my photography skills were not quite good enough to actually capture the flames, my recollection is that they were at least 60 centimetres high coming out of this jar into which gas had been collected. I am sure the—

The Hon. R.I. Lucas interjecting:

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: The Hon. Rob Lucas seems to think that 60—

The Hon. R.I. Lucas: I said it was huge.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: That is right—I thought he was doubting that 60 centimetres was significant (two feet in the old language). All of the submissions that the committee took are up on the website and I would urge people to have a look at my submission. What I do want to do, very quickly, is go through a couple of things that are said in the report. If we look at the recommendations, the first recommendation, which the other two speakers today have referred to, is:

1. Without social licence, unconventional gas exploration/development should not proceed in the South East of South Australia. The committee found that social licence to explore/develop unconventional gas does not yet exist in the South East of South Australia.

I think it is important that that was put as the first recommendation. 'Social licence or consent' is a phrase that has had quite a few outings this year in relation to this issue, certainly, but also in relation to nuclear waste dumps, where the Premier made it very clear that something as substantial as that could not occur without community consent. It does not have community consent and it is my great hope that the Premier will, sooner rather than later, abandon the folly of the nuclear waste dump.

The second recommendation relates to the actual impact of hydraulic fracturing on the environment, and in particular on groundwater. The committee pointed out that the fracking process itself if 'properly managed and regulated, is unlikely to pose significant risks to groundwater', but there are some major caveats in that. First of all, it has to be properly managed and regulated. The committee goes on to say that:

…other processes associated with unconventional gas extraction, including mid to long-term well integrity and surface spills, present risks that need to be properly considered and managed.

I would have to say that it is the issue of surface spills that was probably the dominant issue in terms of environmental impacts in the United States. If members wonder how much water might be involved and if it can really pose a risk to the environment, I can give you a couple of basic statistics: the total amount of toxic wastewater produced by the fracking industry in the United States in one year, the year 2012, was 280 billion gallons.

That water has to be treated and has to go somewhere and what we found too often was that it ended up in drinking water supplies, it ended up in local creeks and rivers. The disposal of wastewater is a serious problem. People might think that fracking for gas does not use that much water. The language that is used around this in the United States is interesting. They talk about 'high-volume fracture stimulation', and the 'high-volume' refers to the high volume of water that is used.

I have a photograph which I took in Pennsylvania and submitted to the inquiry. It is of a sign outside a fracking production well and it identifies how much water they are allowed to use. The amount for peak day consumptive use was 4.990 million gallons per day. If we translate that into metric, 20 million litres of water per day is the maximum that they are allowed to use. When you consider that in the United States there are 82,000 wells, all of a sudden you get some idea of the scope and extent of this industry and the potential problem.

One of the other points the Hon. John Dawkins made, and it is in recommendation No. 5, is that the committee notes—and these are my words, not those of the committee—that the economics are a bit dodgy. In fact, the committee points out that the window of opportunity for a South-East South Australian unconventional gas industry may already be closed. In other words, whatever the economics might have been some years ago, the environment may now be such that it is no longer economic. That is certainly the experience of the United States.

I want to add my thanks to the people involved in this inquiry. In particular, I thank Patrick Dupont and Barbara Coddington, who were the staff to the inquiry. I also want to give a special acknowledgement to those people in the South-East who embraced this parliamentary inquiry, took it seriously, made detailed submissions, attended the hearings and, generally, kept the committee on its toes to make sure that it did hear a variety of views. I would especially like to thank and acknowledge the work of the Limestone Coast Protection Alliance and also the Lock the Gate Alliance.

It is always difficult to single out individuals because the rule is you always leave an important person out, but I will throw caution to the wind and at least identify one person who has been important in this process, and that is Anne Daw. She has been a tireless campaigner for the local environment and the local community, and I have been particularly grateful for her many communications with me in terms of the latest research on this issue.

The next step in this process is that we need to have a look at what the Liberal Party has done with their moratorium, and to work out whether we can do better. The Greens certainly believe we can. I gave notice earlier today of my intention to introduce a bill for an act to amend the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act. That act covers drilling for gas and oil, and my intention is to bring back to this parliament a slightly different proposition to the one that the Liberals have adopted as policy.

The liberal policy is for a 10-year moratorium on fracking in the South-East. The Greens' bill takes that slightly further. What we say is that we should do as the Victorian government has done and rather than keep people's hopes alive with a moratorium, we should basically say that there will be a ban and that ban should extend to all of our high-value farming areas, to all of our conservation estate, and also to the places where people live: so, residential areas. People might think, 'Well, not much chance of fracking in a residential area', but have a look at the outer suburbs of Sydney. The industry has its eyes on many areas.

People might think that gas in South Australia is just about the Cooper Basin and the South-East, but have a look at where the petroleum exploration licences are. They start just north of Adelaide, they go right through the Mid North, they are all over Eyre Peninsula, and they go up to Port Pirie. There are plenty of places that this industry has its eyes on, and as knowledge develops and technology develops it would not surprise me if we get companies wanting to frack in places other than the South-East.

So, I will be giving this parliament a chance to have a look at extending the idea of this moratorium so that it protects our farmland, our conservation land and residential land. The Cooper Basin is an interesting case. Certainly they say that they have been fracking for decades, and they say there has been no problem. The data to support that, I think, is quite sparse, but I do accept that there is a problem with extending a ban to that area straightaway, because closing an industry down overnight—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: Even though I am being baited mercilessly by members of the Liberal Party, what I will say is that whilst the days of fossil fuel extraction are numbered, the idea of closing down the Cooper Basin overnight is not something that I am proposing to put on the table. I think we should start by protecting farmland, conservation land and residential land. I will conclude with a reflection on something the Hon. Rob Brokenshire said.

The Hon. S.G. Wade interjecting:

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: No, I am reflecting in a positive way. I think he referred to SACOME, the chamber of mines, and without verballing the honourable member, he thinks that they kicked a bit of an own goal by not engaging in the process. It was interesting to see their tweet last night as it came out in response to the Liberal Party announcement. The tweet basically says that the 10-year hydraulic fracturing moratorium policy announced by the Liberal Party is 'surprising, reactive leadership'. I must admit I had to read those words several times to try and understand what they are, so I tweeted back to the chamber of mines:

Reactive leadership? You mean reacting to the views of the local community? How undemocratic.

The Hon. R.I. Lucas: You told 'em, Mark!

Members interjecting:

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: Whilst I expected the love affair between the party of blue and green might be very short-lived, I do accept that the Liberal Party has come a little way along the journey—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: —to joining the Greens' position, and I invite them, when my bill comes up in February, to have a serious look at whether this moratorium might better be reflected in a permanent ban that covers areas beyond the South-East of South Australia. With those brief remarks, I also endorse the motion to note this report.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.S. Lee.

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