Queensland’s largest organic beef producer has called for greater environmental safeguards for the state’s pristine channel country amid increasing frustration about long-stalled government promises to protect the area’s wild rivers from gas drilling.
The regenerative waterways that run into the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin are among the world’s last unaltered river systems. The ecosystem was protected under “wild rivers” laws in Queensland from 2005 until 2014, when they were scrapped by the Newman government.
Labor promised “to legislate protections for Queensland’s pristine rivers from large scale industrial operations” before coming to power in 2015, but little of substance has happened since.
The government is preparing a regulatory impact statement, but consultation was delayed during the pandemic. The statement was expected last year but has not yet been released.
In the meantime, the state has quietly progressed gas drilling plans by granting oil and gas leases.
OBE Organic, a farmer-owned company that runs cattle herds throughout the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin, released a position statement this week that said the channel country’s rivers and floodplains “must be protected”.
“It is OBE Organic’s position that the unique characteristics of the Lake Eyre basin require a unique set of regulation for future oil and gas projects,” the statement said.
“This regulation may require exclusion of activities to particularly sensitive parts of the Lake Eyre basin river system.
“Current regulations which guide the activities of the oil and gas industry are largely self-enforced. Too often there is no consequence for non-compliance. Any new regulation needs to account for the cumulative impact of oil and gas extraction in the Lake Eyre basin.”
Following the beef producer’s statement, the Liberal National party opposition called on the government to release the regulatory impact statement.
“Releasing these policy options is essential to provide transparency and certainty for all stakeholders,” an LNP spokesperson said in a statement.
Riley Rocco, the coordinator of the Western Rivers Alliance, said it was “encouraging” that the LNP had now recognised the urgency of the issue.
“We have been waiting eight years for the Palaszczuk government to deliver its promise to protect this globally significant river system,” Rocco said.
“While we wait, oil and gas interests are increasingly encroaching on significant wetland and floodplain areas, threatening to divert and pollute the flood waters that sustain the green heart of arid Australia and local livelihoods.”
The Queensland environment minister, Meaghan Scanlon, said the regulatory impact statement had to be done “thoroughly and properly” and that government was committed to its release.
”We are only having this discussion because the former LNP government … tore up protections,” Scanlon said.
“But I welcome their new interest, and look forward to their constructive engagement when the [statement] is released.”
Government sources have previously said the issue of regulating the channel country has been the source of tension and disagreement between the state’s environment and resources departments.
Guardian Australia reported in 2020 that an independent scientific panel commissioned by the Queensland government had recommended a ban on fracking in the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin, but the experts’ findings were made secret by the state and ultimately ignored.
Nick Holliday, the Queensland outreach coordinator for the conservation group Lock the Gate, said the government needed to protect the channel country. He said it was “abundantly clear” that oil and gas production could not coexist with the beef industry in the region.
“The floodplains of the channel country rivers of the Lake Eyre basin are amongst Queensland’s most productive beef cattle country,” he said.
“The industrialisation of that landscape by gas fracking will have far-reaching consequences for graziers.”
