How the Green-Farmer Alliance will move Queensland toward sustainability

On Thursday, 2nd September, Six Degrees spokesperson on coal seam gas Drew Hutton addressed the Queensland Rural Press Club in Toowoomba. The Queensland Rural Press Club  invited Drew to address its second annual Heritage Toowoomba AgShow breakfast to discover how the farming community and the green movement have found common ground in an era of unprecedented mining and resource exploration and development across some of Queensland’s most productive land. A transcript of the speech is provided here.

How the green/farmer alliance will move Queensland toward sustainability

By Drew Hutton

The organisation I am spokesperson for – Friends of the Earth – has been campaigning against open cut coal mining on agricultural land and environmentally sensitive areas for over two years as part of the Six Degrees campaign. However, it is now only a little over four months since I first became personally involved in the campaign to protect rural Queensland from the impacts of both coal and coal seam gas mining.

From the start I argued that only an alliance between rural action groups and predominantly urban-based environmental campaigners would achieve this objective. I think subsequent events have borne this out.

However, it hasn’t always been easy. There are long-standing animosities between farmers and environmentalists, exemplified by one of my first encounters with a farmer as I was going around finding out what people’s concerns were. I walked on to one farmer’s verandah and was greeted with

You’re Drew Hutton, aren’t you?

I said I was and he replied: 

You’re the bastard who caused all my problems in the first place (referring to the tree clearing laws).

I asked if that meant that he didn't want to talk to me. He replied,

No, of course I do, come in, have a cup of tea, let me tell you about these bloody gas companies.

At another time a farmer said to me,

What you’ve got to remember about me Drew is I’m a conservative, Christian farmer.

Not wishing to be put on the back foot I replied: 

Well what you’ve got to remember about me is I’m a left-wing, inner-city metrosexual.

(To be frank I’m not exactly sure what a metrosexual is but I’m fairly sure I’m not one.) Anyway, he looked a bit startled and then replied,

Well, we should get on like a house on fire.

And we did.

In these last four months I have seen the mood in the bush change from a mix of resentment, resignation and impotent fury to one of optimism and combativeness. In those four months we have seen an alliance formed between farmers and other rural groups with environmentalists like myself.

We have had one large rally of 500 farmers at Cecil Plains called by Dave Armstrong, a protest of many different rural action groups at the Roma Community Cabinet, a farmers and environmentalists rally, organized by Friends of the Earth, outside Parliament House, a blockade of QGC activities on the Tara rural residential estate and the formation of over a dozen action groups on the Darling Downs and South Burnett with memberships in the thousands.

We have also seen the unraveling of the State Government’s plans for the most radical transformation of the Queensland landscape since the expansion of the pastoral frontier in the early days of European settlement with the Bligh government’s failure to understand the potential impact of conducting an uncontrolled experiment on inland Queensland with the massive expansion of open cut coal mining in the populous and fertile south of the state and the introduction of a whole new industry – coal seam gas.

Just one example of the monstrous extent of this transformation is its impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

The current frenzy of coal and coal seam gas extraction in Australia is best exemplified here in Queensland. Of the 69 new or greatly expanded coal mines being proposed 30 are in in this state. One of these, the BHP-Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance’s medium-sized Caval Ridge mine will add 466 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the global atmosphere over its 30 year life.  Of that, a little over 19 million tonnes will be emitted directly or indirectly in Australia as fugitive emissions.

Add to this the purely domestic emissions of the other 29 proposed open cut coal mines along with the emissions created by extracting, compressing, piping and liquefying coal seam gas and clearing vegetation for CSG projects and you have a major increase in the country’s 2008-2009 greenhouse  emissions which are an already massive 537 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

My back-of-an envelope calculations are that this new extractive activity will add over 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from purely domestic sources (in other words before any product goes into a power station or steel mill).

This would be an increase of over 30 per cent over the already outrageous greenhouse gas output from Queensland of 190 million tonnes per year. And all this at a time when both major parties are committed to a 5 per cent decrease in emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.

Of course, there is also the now well-publicised threat to the Great Artesian Basin from de-pressurising the Walloon Coal Measures and the still-to-be appreciated threats to human health from gas wells in too close proximity to dwellings, especially in the Dalby-Tara-Chinchilla triangle.

Now, as the failure of the Bligh government to sell their coal and coal seam gas adventure becomes patently obvious and public opinion is swinging markedly in favour of the green/farmer alliance, the Government is attempting to play catch-up. Its strategy consists of the following:

• Releasing a policy framework paper as a prelude to legislation protecting the “best of the best” strategic cropping land from open cut coal mining.
• Introducing guidelines, amendments to legislation and policies to improve landowner rights, consultation and communication with landowners and residents and accountability by the gas companies
• Beefing up the regulatory regime and enforcement mechanisms to bring an end to many of the cowboy practices being employed by some gas companies.

The Bligh government is far too fond of believing that all it needs to do to get more support from the electorate is to communicate its messages better. Instead, it needs to have a closer look at its policies and general direction.

In this area of coal and coal seam gas mining all the best communications and PR techniques in the world will not convince most farmers, or indeed, most of the Queensland public, that mining on the Darling Downs in a way that threatens a food bowl and the Great Artesian Basin and endangers human health is a compatible land use with the current activities being undertaken across the Surat Basin.

The State Government’s Protecting Queensland's strategic cropping land policy framework is a good start but very limited in scope. It is lacking in detail, contains the possibility of leaving a patchwork quilt effect with some paddocks off-limits and neighbouring ones available for mining and, worst of all, no complete package that encompasses the land surface, buffer zones, aquifer recharge areas and underground water.

It also allows coal seam gas mining on the strategic cropping land as well as all other land and, if CSG mining does cause draw-downs in, say, the Condamine alluviums, the consequent loss of irrigation along the Condamine flood plain will put many farmers out of business. Of course, open cut coal mining and coal seam gas mining can still occur on all good agricultural land that does not qualify as “the best of the best”.

Secondly, recent moves by the State Government to improve landowner rights in relation to mining companies and improving consultation mechanisms is just catch-up and is no more than what should have been in place before this mad coal and gas rush started. Landowners don’t need more communication; they need the State Government and the gas companies to do the studies to show how the Great Artesian Basin will be affected by mining and how they will effectively address these potential impacts. If the companies’ environmental management plans are not good enough, they should not be allowed to continue their activities in sensitive areas.

The third attempt by the State Government to justify their continued support for mining in agricultural areas is the most ludicrous. Their claim is that a rigorous regulatory regime will ensure the public interest is protected and the mining companies adhere to strict environmental standards. Now, I will withdraw all my objections to this argument if the State Government can show me one Queensland open cut coal mine that has been rehabilitated to anything like its original condition.

Certainly the goal of restoring good agricultural land to its original productivity is a pipe dream if we look at mines like Collinsville, Goonyella, Oaky Creek and the like – mines that will continue to have off-site impacts for perhaps centuries to come. The regulatory system will work only when local communities are aroused and putting pressure on them. At all other times resources are withdrawn from the regulatory agency, political leadership evaporates and the needs of the mining companies prevail every time.

The one question that really needs to be asked about all this frenetic mining activity, especially in the new areas of the Galilee Basin and the Surat Basin is: why are we putting all this effort and all these resources into the extraction of fossil fuels at just that moment in history when the world’s top atmospheric scientists are calling for radically reducing carbon emissions and the international community is moving slowly but inexorably toward a price on carbon?

Why are we persisting in locking ourselves into a twentieth century economy when a truly progressive government would try to be just ahead of the game?

If the current cooperation between environmentalists and rural Queenslanders is to become more than merely a temporary strategic alliance, then there will need to be engagement at more than a campaigning level. Key values for environmentalists are such things as biodiversity protection and ecosystem maintenance and other goals like food security, resource protection and farm productivity are slightly lower down the list.

Nevertheless, I believe the overwhelming majority of environmentalists would much prefer to see farmers as the main land managers in the bush to miners. The environmental advances of the past few decades have largely passed mining executives by except for the desire to hire enough people who can use the appropriate language and spin the appropriate green-friendly message. Farmers, on the other hand, have a solid record of environmental achievements, especially in the last couple of decades, and it is this record that gives hope for a productive dialogue and, I believe, should force the environment movement to make adjustments to some of their policies. Let me give three examples.

On irrigation practices there have been important advances in water efficiency and, in recent times farmers like those using the Condamine alluvium aquifers, have volunteered to reduce their allocations by as much as 60 per cent in order to protect this incredibly valuable resource. The gas mining companies, on the other hand, have been allowed to withdraw unlimited amounts of water from the Great Artesian Basin in the process of extracting coal seam gas. This has the potential to de-pressurise underground aquifers including the Condamine alluviums. The potential impact of CSG mining on these unique natural resources is the single most damaging argument against the existence of the industry in the Surat Basin and the companies will need to go to quite some effort to prove they can conduct their activities safely.

A decade ago the cotton industry, battered by popular perceptions of it as a water-wasting, pesticide-happy bunch, undertook an environmental audit of its operations and, as a result, launched a program to introduce best practice management. This involved such things as increasing water efficiency, reducing pesticide use and improving land management generally.

The results have been astonishing. Cattle contamination incidents dropped to zero by 2003, water efficiency doubled in 10 years and pesticide use dropped by 45% between 1999 and 2006. While any environmentalist would have to be impressed by such figures as well as the minimum till practices which are common, they also present us with a challenge. Decreased pesticide use is helped by the use of genetically engineered cotton and minimum till mainly occurs as the result of pesticide use. Perhaps a more nuanced approach to these issues needs to be taken by the environment movement.

On the even more vexed issue of tree clearing, it has always worried me that I gave my approval to the State Government’s Vegetation Management Act without insisting on a package which recognised the valuable role played by farmers in both sequestering carbon and preserving biodiversity. I think the environment movement should be pushing for incentives for farmers to maintain forest cover.

We have already seen the success of the Queensland Government's Nature Refuge program, with around 1.7 million hectares voluntarily set aside by private property owners as conservation areas, with modest government support. Agforce figures suggest that 89% of this is area comes from primary producers. Many of these landholders have invested considerable time, energy and resources in preserving these areas. Yet nature refuges and carbon sequestration projects currently have no protection from mining developments either. This robs landholders of any incentive to participate in such schemes that would provide invaluable public benefit for generations to come.

It seems to me the Australian Greens have a good policy for achieving these objectives while avoiding the pitfalls of Macquarie Street tax rorts or alienating farm land. They propose to set up a Green Carbon Authority which would:

• Assess the ecological and social impacts of proposed carbon forest projects.
• If appropriate, approve carbon forest projects such that land-owners can then either create forest offset certificates eligible to be traded in the emission trading scheme, or receive some other form of payment directly from the Authority.
• Pay a 'biodiversity premium' to private forest owners to provide an incentive to establish biodiverse forests rather than monocultures.
• Fund carbon stewardship projects.
• Develop a methodology to assess, approve and monitor soil carbon sequestration projects, including biochar projects.
• Schemes should also be established to enable farmers to be paid adequately for solar panels or wind turbines placed on their land. These energy sources have the added advantage of not sucking up all their underground water as well.

Environmentalists need to be prepared to meet farmers half-way but farmers also need to take on board some of the more urgent messages of the green movement. The most important issue is climate change and the most important measure for combating it is putting a price on carbon. Farmers should not be afraid of this as it will reduce the attractiveness of coal and coal fired power stations and therefore reduce the pressure on agricultural land. Both farmers and environmentalists should in the lead-up to the implementation of this policy, use all their lobbying power to ensure that compensation for increased energy prices goes to consumers, including farmers, rather than the big-polluting corporations.

I would also hope that the Greens can influence the next Federal Government to introduce amendments to federal environmental legislation to have the potential impacts of developments on the Great Artesian Basin and good agricultural land as triggers for Federal Government involvement in those development decisions. Such amendments would ensure that we had another level of government providing oversight of major, high-impact developments when state governments insist on walking into proposals like mining good agricultural land and allowing mining that would endanger the Great Artesian Basin, seeing only the dollars they might bring.

However, the responsibility for ensuring the Queensland environment is protected from irresponsible development lies, in the first instance, with the State Government and the government of Anna Bligh as well as the alternative government, the LNP, need to start showing leadership in this area. Each has a flawed record. Nevertheless, I would not be surprised if the Bligh government were to become the greenest in the state's history (a very low bar of course) in the next few months as they see the Greens vote in the state edge up to that all-important 15-16%. They have already started to a certain extent.

As a result of the work by farmers over the last few years the Bligh government has introduced a potentially good policy framework for protecting prime agricultural land from coal mining and Minister Robertson says he is set to introduce some sweeping reforms on coal seam gas. These won't be good enough but we will continue the pressure until they are.

Unfortunately, the LNP has convinced itself that environmentalists are their enemy and political conservatives generally (with a few notable exceptions) have taken an ideological attitude to the issue of climate change preferring to see acceptance of human-induced climate change as the defining poliical stance rather than the policy mechanisms that must be adopted to deal with it. Instead of seeing climate change as a policy challenge and focusing their efforts on the question of what are the best policy responses for dealing with it – market mechanisms, regulation and so on – they believe the key question is whether or not climate change even exists.

With such an attitude the LNP is just capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at the next election - again. The key environmental issues of the next state election will be climate change and the protection of agricultural land, environmentally sensitive areas and water resources from the ravages of mining. No political party can afford to go into that election without seriously addressing these concerns.

There is also the need for a slightly longer term program of environmental law reform. Environmental campaigners have been struggling for years against the profoundly anti-environmental content of development legislation like the Coordinator General’s State Development Public Works Organisation Act, our major planning legislation the Sustainable Planning Act, our system of environmental impact assessment, the sections covering mining in the Environmental Protection Act and public consultation and appeal rights in much of this legislation. The current conflict between mining and agricultural interests is testimony to the fact that environmental advocates, like me, have failed to get these reforms enacted in the past.

The key issue of our times is how we use natural resources. This is not a trite observation. It has enormous ramifications for how politics play out in the next few decades.  People will line up according to where they stand in relation to that key question. Conservationists, farmers, some unions, some finance capital, capital with an interest in renewable energy, inner city professionals and many others will stand for a sustainable approach while the fossil fuel industries, their political backers on the right and the left, some unions and others will fight all attempts to achieve such a transition. At an international level this could even involve 'resource wars'. In organising for this struggle we need to ditch irrelevant class war slogans and hackneyed ideological positions. The green-farmer alliance is an early but necessary step in the movement for sustainability.