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KARA:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Kara-Jensen Mackinnon. This is 7am.

Tony Windsor was a politician and as an independent, helped hand Julia Gillard minority government and the prime ministership. But, despite being a politician, he says that at the end of the day, politicians are, by their very nature, ‘weak people’. And if there’s any example that’s taught him that, it’s the decades-long fight over our water and how we protect it.

Today, former Independent MP Tony Windsor, on our water, how gas developments can threaten it and how grassroots campaigns can force politicians to back down.

It’s Monday, January 30.

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KARA:

Tony, This is a story about water and how for a really long time, at least in federal law, we didn't really consider water to be part of the environment that we're supposed to protect. So why do you think that was the case?

TONY:

Well, I think the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act was set up back in 1999, and that was in response to various pressure groups, putting pressure on the Howard Government then to actually do a bit more about the environment and give the Commonwealth a bit more say in terms of what was happening to the Commonwealth. But water had never been included and I'd been on a campaign for about 8 to 10 years on water issues. I'd been involved in, you know, achieving sustainability in some of the irrigation systems in New South Wales. So when the hung parliament came along, one of the provisos that I put on in relation to Julia Gillard was that a water trigger be put in place, that the EPBC act, as it's known, actually did include water where large coal mines and coal seam gas projects were involved.

So the amendment essentially demanded that those proponents would have to deal with the Commonwealth. And essentially in doing so that gave the Commonwealth some oversights as to what the states were doing in the past. Now some people liked that, others didn't, but really what it did was remove the capacity of the states to be the receivers of the money from those projects, from total approval of those projects, that there had to be some oversight at the federal level. And one of the last acts of Julia Gillard's hung parliament or minority government was that the water trigger was put in place. And much to her credit, and a decade has passed nearly and there's been a number of attempts to actually water down or destroy the water trigger and so far it still exists.

KARA:

And Tony you were famously part of that government and it sounds like you're also a vital part of this legislation getting passed. So I wonder if you could just paint a bit of a picture of what it was like the moment that that bill did pass.

TONY:

Well, it's a fascinating day. I'd been concerned for some time that some within the government, the then minister Martin Ferguson, was one. There were many others actually that weren't happy to see something like a water trigger included in the EPBC Act. So I knew those forces were at work in terms of trying to stop it from happening. Julia Gillard had committed to it and I was always certain that she would in fact do it. But it was getting fairly late in the piece and when it was the rumour that Kevin Rudd was going to topple Julia Gillard or attempt to topple Julia Gillard, that sent some shivers through my back too, because that would have meant that all bets are off and there were no obligations on behalf of me, Kevin Rudd or Kevin Rudd to me. So I started to feel a bit anxious and I remember particular day, I think it was just before 12 o'clock and the debate was to stop at 12:30 on a Friday actually, which is unusual for the Parliament to start with. And I was talking to Simon Crean about getting the water trigger amendment on and he started talking about a whole lot of strange things about what if Kevin Rudd became the Prime Minister and what would happen. And I'm thinking about the water trigger, not particularly about Kevin Rudd doing anything…

Archival Tape – Simon Crean:

“I have talked to the Prime Minister yesterday and today. And as a result of that conversation, I informed her that I would think about my position and get back to her before I made this announcement… ”

TONY:

…and the water trigger did go through and just after that, minutes after Simon Crean moved, there should be a spill of his own party.

Archival Tape – Simon Crean:

“...I am asking her to call a spill of all leadership positions in the party.”

TONY:

Julia Gillard, to her great credit, in my view, once she knew she was going to be toppled, she really had no obligation to make sure that the water trigger amendment had actually gone to the Governor-General because everything needs to be sent off to the Governor-General before it actually becomes law and she made sure that the appropriate processes had taken place.

Archival Tape – Speaker:

“We have just conducted the ballot. There was a spill for the position of leadership. I can announce the result. It is. Kevin Rudd. 57 votes. Julia Gillard. 45 votes.”

Archival Tape – Julia Gillard:

“I congratulate Mr. Rudd on his election. In view of his election, I have written to the Governor-General asking her to commission Rudd as Prime Minister of Australia. I will shortly leave this Parliament to see the governor-general on this matter…”

TONY:

She honoured her commitment even in those last hours of the prime ministership.

KARA:

And what actually changed for the companies that wanted to pursue gas developments after that amendment passed? How did this water trigger change the way those companies had to do business?

TONY:

Well, the water trigger had an impact in my view, directly, some others would say indirectly, but it was all part of the package of scrutiny of these projects. That there were two major projects that were proposed for the Liverpool Plains, it's quite a significant area agriculturally. There were two proposals that were put out in the early 2000’s, one by BHP to develop a 500 million tonne. I think it was the biggest coal mine in the world at that time. The proposal, a 500 million tonne proposal and another by the Chinese company Shenhua, only about 20 kilometres apart, but both of those projects failed to pass the water test. They had a degree of scrutiny through the water trigger and other methods, but essentially at the end of all of that scrutiny, the companies withdrew themselves. They won't say they withdrew strictly because of the water trigger or other water issues, but it's well known their incapacity to develop appropriate water management plans with these volumes of water that would have been all around these coal mines, that it was just a nonsense that they could be developed. So the Commonwealth have had some say in terms of those mines moving on.

KARA:

But Tony, there are a lot of Gas Projects that are going ahead, aren’t there? In particular, I want to talk to you about one that is going to be developed not far from where you live actually. And that is the Santos gas project. Can you tell me a bit about it and if it’s going ahead, does that mean it’s passed these tests; that it won’t do serious damage to water in the area?

TONY:

Well, Santos is proposing to drill 850 wells in what's known as the Pilliga Forest…

Archival Tape – Newsreader:

“Santos has federal and state approval for the project, which would see up to 850 gas wells built across 95,000 hectares of state forest and privately owned farmland near Narrabri in north west New South Wales.”

TONY:

…but it was a proposal prior to the Gillard years that a development on the in the Narrabri region they put forward and there was a licence granted so that the exploration could take place. And so there was an argument at the time when the water trigger did come in, did previous projects that had gained some sort of approval have to go through all the hoops of the water trigger and it was deemed by the Abbott Government in particular that they didn't. The Abbott government wanted the project to go ahead. Santos and other coal seam gas companies, major donors to all the political parties. They have people in parliament, they have lobbyists in Parliament. So it was a project that the vested interests didn't want anyone interfering with, and particularly not some sort of federal oversight, particularly if the recipients of some of the largest of these companies were going to both sides of parliament. But essentially it's got approval at state and federal levels. It has now approval to mine coal seam gas on the Liverpool Plains. So it really that becomes a new project if, in fact, they ask for approval.

Archival Tape – Santos CEO:

“The Narribri gas project could provide up to 1300 jobs during construction, up to 200 local direct and indirect jobs during operations. Approximately $1.2 billion in royalties to the State of New South Wales to help fund essential government services such as health, transport and education”

TONY:

…that the people of Liverpool Plains are saying, no, we're not going to sit here and let gradualism take care of this as it has in the past. You get a start in the Pilliga, then you just move, move on and on and on and argue that, oh, we need the jobs, we need the jobs. We need the gas. We need the gas.

Archival Tape – Lock the Gate spokesperson:

“Santos has big plans for this region. Originally with seven gas fields from Dubbo to Morandi to Moree, and people know that. And so they are coming together over this gas field because they love the Pilliga and Valley groundwater, but also because as a region they're rejecting the sort of industrial vision that Santos is offering.”

TONY:

So essentially, all the community members in the Aboriginal community or the irrigation community or the farming community or the towns, etc. are very apprehensive about this project as to whether if it did move onto the Liverpool Plains, what it would in fact do to those resources.

KARA:

We’ll be back after this.

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KARA:

Tony, you’ve been talking about this Santos project in Narrabri and the possibility that it could expand to the Liverpool Plains. Now obviously, it sounds like you're very familiar with the area. So can you tell me a bit about this expansive place that we're talking about – what’s it like?

TONY:

I don't actually live on the Liverpool Plains, but we're not far from them and a magnificent area of flood plains. So you have a mountain range, the Great Dividing Range, where a lot of erosion has taken place and bought, these magnificent fertile soils and they are very fertile plains and they are very deep soils, probably only second to the Ukraine in terms of quality. Now underneath the Liverpool Plains, there are significant water resources as well. Essentially if you dig a hole out there, water will run into it if you go deep enough. And that's one of the concerns that people have in relation to Santos that if is has hundreds or thousands of holes across this landscape.Not all water aquifers are the same. Some have fresh water, some are good water, some bad water. But if you start drilling holes through all of them, in some cases that will actually fracture the various aquifers and those water resources will actually run together. If there's good water and bad water being mixed you end up in bad water. And if you drill into a landscape without due scientific scrutiny - and the scientific work just hasn't been done on some of these things - But there's a whole range of issues that that I've called for Tanya Plibersek to actually start to investigate and perhaps carry out a review of the whole project, you know, given the extra knowledge that we have now that we didn't have a decade ago.

KARA:

And with these beautiful floodplains under threat, how have politicians reacted to this looming gas development? How has the state and federal government handled the Santos project, do you think?

TONY:

Well it’s become fairly obvious that this issue was being sidelined to a bi-partisan issue coming into the New South Wales election.

Archival Tape – Journalist

“Premier, you know that power prices are the major concern at the moment. What's going on with the Narrabri Gas project? Because we know that Santos wants to start drilling next month?”

TONY:

You've got the Premier Dom Perrottet is proposing the project mainly for domestic political purposes to try and alleviate the gas issue in in Sydney.

Archival Tape – Dominic Perrottet:

“Well, Ben, I want this project up and running as soon as possible. When I became Premier, I made it very clear that the Narrabri Gas Project is incredibly important for the people of our state.”

TONY:

His deputy, Matt Kean, has also changed his tune and has been the captain of climate change. But now is the green chameleon as he's known, or the Putin of the Plains on the Liverpool Plains that he's now suggesting that it's a good idea and would in fact force landholders allow people, the Santos people, to come onto their land to sort of survey pipelines.

Archival Tape – Newsreader:

“The energy minister granted Santos authority to explore routes through private land for the Narrabri Gas Project on January 13.”

Archival Tape – Unidentified Resident:

“We have explicitly told the State that we don’t want this kind of proposal in our region or on our private property. It's pretty galling to have Matt Kane finally issue an authority to survey to Santos against our express wishes.”

TONY:

Along with that we have Chris Minns is essentially refusing to engage with the issue, saying it was too complex, it's gone too far, I can't do much about it and let's forget about it. Now he's got some criticism for that, but I noticed his candidate in the electorate of Tamworth, which covers part of this proposed area, came out on radio yesterday and said that they were endorsing the project. So you've got them all sitting there endorsing it. You've got the Labor Party in Canberra endorsing it. Barnaby Joyce, the local member endorsing it. All of these people have lined up behind it. So I think the people of this area are thinking, well, the politicians are just waving this past, hoping that there won't be too much flack.

KARA:

And I mean, you’ve worked with the current Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek Tony. Do you think she’s doing enough to scrutinise this project? Is there more that could be done at the federal level?

TONY:

Oh well, I always had a lot of time for Tanya. I thought she was a really good person to start with, but a very capable minister as well and always willing to talk about particular issues. I think this is a difficult issue for her. She actually called for the review of 18 projects to be reviewed in relation to the impacts of the EPBC Act. Quite rightly she's done that, I think. There's some of the Great Barrier Reef issues and things. There are a number of projects that really need additional scrutiny and I'm arguing that perhaps the Santos Narrabri proposal should be part of that review as well, given the new information that we have. So I think it'd be high time if they were reviewing a number of environmental issues that the former government put in place, that the Santos project be put in place as well. But I do know that there are forces within the Labor Party, that there's a lot of pressure, both donation pressure and political pressure from some of the Labor royalty, for instance, that want this project to go ahead. So as Environment Minister, she will be obviously fighting against that. And I think the people of Liverpool Plains would like to give her a hand.

KARA:

Hmmm, Tony, finally, I mean, will the major parties actually respond to you think, to community activism on gas projects like this? Do you think they will they care?

TONY:

Things can change if people have the courage and fortitude to get up and demand change. Politicians are naturally weak by nature. And if they're dealing with groups of strong willed people who have got some very logical arguments on their side, they will capitulate to those people. Looking at Dom Perrottet, Chris Minns, Matt Kean, those guys aren't inherently strong people. So hopefully they'll get the message.

KARA:

Tony, thank you so much for your time.

TONY:

Thanks.

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KARA:

Also in the news today,

An entire police unit in the US state of Memphis was disbanded, after footage was released showing a group of five officers beating 29-year-old Tyre Nichols for 3 minutes until he loses consciousness – Nichols later died in hospital.

Police had initially told the public that officers had acted appropriately and sought immediate medical assistance when Nichols needed it. The five former officers will now face murder charges.

And…

According to a new survey, one in five Australians report that their GP has stopped bulk-billing and more than half say they go to a doctor who charges them out-of-pocket expenses.

The poll by Resolve Political Monitor, demonstrates the rapid decline in bulk billing doctors as the commonwealth comes under pressure to strengthen medicare – the states will ask prime minister Anthony Albanese to reform the system at the national cabinet this coming Friday.

I’m Kara-Jensen Mackinnon - this is 7am - see you tomorrow.

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