Rocky waters as river act scrapped

Original story by Graham Lloyd, The Australian

MINING, farm, indigenous and environmental groups are on a collision course in western Queensland following the Newman government’s decision to scrap Labor’s Wild Rivers Act and allow oil, coal-seam gas and shale gas exploration in the Channel Country.

The Queensland Resources Council said the decision had opened the door to a potentially “world-class” resource, but the farmers’ lobby group AgForce said it wanted a moratorium on gas developments until there was a better understanding of the science and the industry’s effect on water. Indigenous leaders called for more consultation, and environmental groups said the state government had “torn up a sensible compromise”.

Bob Morrish, the natural resources delegate at a briefing by Queensland Mines Minister Andrew Cripps in Longreach yesterday, said there were few details of how the new system would work.

He said Mr Cripps “promised stringent controls but wouldn’t tell us what they were”.

Mr Cripps said the government had ruled out open-cut mining and capped water extraction on the Georgina and Diamantina rivers and Cooper Creek, but he opened the way for oil and gas developments in areas that had been out of bounds under wild rivers legislation.

The Channel Country is the world’s largest unspoilt ephemeral waterway. Irregular floodwaters from northwest Queensland spread over kilometre-wide systems of channels to make their way slowly to Lake Eyre in central Australia.

Mr Cripps said oil and gas development would be strictly controlled in the Environmental Protection Act. “This will mean proposed petroleum and gas developments will be subject to stronger environmental conditioning than in any other part of Queensland,” he said. “A special Channel Country protection area will be created (to) protect a greater area of riverine channels and floodplains than the existing wild rivers legislation.”

Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche welcomed the decision, which he said had taken a “precautionary approach to future development of the Channel Country as a result of lengthy and transparent consultations with all stakeholders”.

“This is a sensible improvement on the previous government’s approach of declaring large swaths of Queensland off-limits to development to appease Brisbane-based environmental pressure groups,” Mr Roche said.

Wilderness Society national campaign director Lyndon Schneiders said environment groups would campaign to maintain strict protections.

“The resource industry should be careful what they wish for. They have now clearly been responsible for stripping back high-level protection in a sensitive environment,” he said.

“Environment groups have invested enormous time and effort with the local community to get sensible protection in that country. The mining industry must realise it has just torn up a sensible compromise.”

AgForce senior policy adviser Dale Miller said farmers had been supportive of finding an alternative framework. However, there were concerns about the expansion of the unconventional gas industry. “Our position on CSG is for a moratorium in those regions until there is adequate scientific knowledge about the potential impacts,” he said.

Australia’s Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, said policymakers needed to get regulations and policies in place “ahead of the game”.

In an address to the National Press Club, he said: “We’ve just released recommendations of a report on shale gas, about six weeks ago, and one of the recommendations in that is that we get the policies and regulations in place before it becomes a problem.”

Indigenous elder Gerry Fogarty, representing the Georgina and Diamantina catchment areas, said he was not satisfied enough people had been given a say on the proposed changes.