FOR most farmers, coal seam gas (CSG) issue emerged from nowhere and now threatens to overturn long-held assumptions about what it means to own farmland. Unprepared, battling against a tidal wave of capital and the political upper hand of the miners, landholders have so far had to resort to delaying tactics or compromise. Is there a better way? Tony Windsor thinks so.
Rural Press science and environment editor Matthew Cawood caught up with the Independent Federal MP on the family’s Coonamble property, “Beanbah South”.
A few weeks ago, Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan called Tony Windsor and asked whether the Independent MP had any issues with the Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT).
Mr Windsor said he hadn’t.
He regards the MRRT as a more equitable way of sharing the nation’s mineral resource than mining royalties.
Then Santos moved onto the Liverpool Plains with the intention of drilling “pilot” coal seam gas (CSG) wells, despite other mining activity being halted until the results of a Namoi catchment groundwater study are released in March (Santos this week agreed to halt activity until the report was released).
“That’s when I thought that these people aren’t listening or learning,” Mr Windsor said.
“They don’t care. Not just Santos, but the extractive industries generally have things in their favour politically and financially.”
He called Mr Swan back, and said his support for the MRRT was conditional on the development of a process that could properly assess the impacts of mining on the long-term productive capacity of a landscape.
Mr Windsor had the process in mind: the Namoi Catchment Management Authority (CMA) in his own electorate has spent about $6 million putting together the ingredients for a many-layered risk assessment process.
And he had the funding source: the MRRT.
The mine approval process is currently skewed in favour of the miners, Mr Windsor says.
The development and approval process is in the hands of those who profit from mining – the miners and the State government – and few, if any, of those making the decisions have ties to the affected area.
“These are money-making ventures on a piece of paper in a city, which will affect people with generations of contribution to their communities.”
In short, Mr Windsor says, politics is not the right platform for objective decision-making on mining.
The model he’s tying his MRRT support to is built on science, and covers a lot more than CSG development.
The Namoi CMA’s prototype uses multiple layers of information about the catchment to highlight where stresses might occur on natural capital like soils, threatened plants and animals and water.
When this information is compiled into a computer model, it provides a way to assess the impact of not just one mine, but the cumulative effect of mine developments across the landscape, and into the future.
This concept of “cumulative risk” is currently missing, Mr Windsor notes.
“In the application for a coal mine, nowhere in its approval process does it have to take into account another coal mine 10 kilometres away.
“It only has to account for impacts on its own land.”
And the model doesn’t just apply to mining development.
“What would 1000ha of agroforestry at Breeza mean? Probably not a lot. But what would 40,000ha of trees in the catchment mean in terms of runoff and water dynamics?”
“I don’t know, but this process can model the likely outcomes of all these things.
“It gives us a way to assess, say, two coal mines and a CSG field 10km apart – or six mines and 60,000ha of agroforestry and 50,000ha of irrigation.
“What are the cumulative impacts of all those things on the catchment?
“We should know this anyway.
“It’s crazy that we’re making decisions based on spot fires.”
Environmental values are now the main concern, but the process allows other overlays to be added: food-producing capacity, cultural values, or catchment-level climate modelling.
Mr Windsor wants the modelling process to be funded out of the MRRT, to the tune of $200-$400 million a year, and rolled out catchment-by-catchment across mining-farming flashpoints – the Liverpool Plains, Darling Downs, the Gloucester area, Margaret River in WA.
“The government has always said it doesn’t have any money for these processes. Well, here’s the money. Let’s get a good idea moving.”
And to ensure the final development decision is not wholly decided by the States, which has a large vested interest in mining, Mr Windsor also proposes the Commonwealth be given a development kill switch that is triggered by sensitivities over water.
In 1999, the Howard government implemented the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, which allows the Commonwealth to intervene in State issues if triggers relating to endangered species or heritage are activated.
Water is a natural addition to the Act, in Mr Windsor’s view.
“That doesn’t mean that in the Pilbara, the Minister will get involved in every mining application. He doesn’t now, on endangered species issues.”
“But if you risk-assess your catchments and find that red lights start to go off over water, then the Commonwealth can intervene over the State, which wants to drive income from the process.”
His ideas will take time to implement, Mr Windsor acknowledges, and the pent-up capital behind CSG and mining in general is raring to go.
“But if speed is of the essence, it means you’re going to rush your processes,” he said.
“And if you’re going to take on these communities, you’ll actually slow down. It’s six years now since BHP came onto the Liverpool Plains floodplain.”
NFF: Why we didn’t back the Windsor Bill. See Opinion p27 in this week's The Land.
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