Wednesday, 24 June 2026

I rise to make my contribution on the bill before us, the Regional Planning Interests (Condamine Alluvium) and Other Legislation
Amendment Bill 2026. This bill introduces unparalleled, landmark protections for landowners facing the impacts of ground subsidence and directional drilling. More importantly, the amendments introduced tonight prove that the LNP government—of which I am proud to be a part—is a government that listens, responds and acts according to the wishes of the community.

To truly understand the magnitude of what we are passing tonight, we must look at what the community was forced to endure before we took office. Under the previous Labor state government, our landowners—and I am talking about the ones in the Southern Downs of course, but they share the plight with many others—were treated as an afterthought. If a gas company set up operations right on your boundary line and those activities caused the ground on your side of the fence to sink or lose its
vital level or overland flow, you had no recourse. Under the old Labor framework, off-tenure neighbours had zero statutory recourse. To get a cent of compensation, a local farmer had to engage in a gruelling, financially ruinous legal battle against multibillion dollar resource entities just to prove a gas company had caused an effect to their land.

Labor’s legacy was a rigid, top-down system that buried its head in the sand over CSG induced subsidence and forced our farmers to bear the environmental costs alone. They refused to listen to our region. What did Labor do? I have heard the name Liza Balmain bandied around by people who do not know Liza and who probably met her just in the course of this. I have been sitting at Liza Balmain’s kitchen table for years, and she did not have a lot of good things to say about the Labor government, I’ll give you the drum.

I take the interjection from the member for Lockyer. What they wanted was a framework which enabled them to guard against subsidence and know that they could seek compensation. They did not want to have to pay the whole amount of doing it, and this bill achieves that.

Firstly, this bill codifies a subsidence compensatable effect into law. If CSG activity alters your farm’s topography, ruins your irrigation channels or drops your agricultural productivity, it is now legally recognised as a compensable loss. Secondly, we have permanently closed the neighbour loophole left behind by Labor by introducing a five-kilometre off-tenure protection zone. This is important. If a farming property sits within five kilometres of an authorised CSG area, the resource holder is strictly liable for any subsidence damage they cause. The burden of proof shifts and the neighbour is legally protected. Thirdly, we have addressed the hidden threat of advanced activities. For too long, companies—and we are talking about the Arrows of this world—could execute things like directional wells and deviated drilling thousands of metres underneath a farmer’s property from a starting point miles and miles away. The owner may not even know where it is coming from and it could be without the owner’s explicit consent. However, tonight we mandate that gas resource holders must enter into formal conduct and compensation agreements with these landowners, regardless of whether the drilling ever breaks the surface of their soil.

A good government is not one that just drafts laws from an office in Brisbane; it listens to the people who have to live by them. As the member for Southern Downs, I have no complaints about the responsiveness of this government to the genuine concerns that I have taken to it on behalf of the constituents whom it is my honour to represent in this place. When a government says, ‘The community differs with our view on this. We’d better change it,’ that government is a good government. I remind the Labor opposition members over there who were around when the vegetation management bill came through in around 2019—and I know the member for Lockyer would remember this—that 90 per cent of the submissions and those who came before the committee were vehemently and virulently opposed to what was being proposed but Labor went ahead and did it anyway. When Labor members walk into this place and say that they are the farmers’ friend, it rings hollow, to put it mildly.

When this bill was initially introduced, it proposed a streamlining mechanism which would be the removal of the regional interests development approval provisions. As I understand things, the department’s data shows that there have only been four occasions when this specific RIDA process has actually been enlivened for gas activities in the area we are talking about here, the Condamine Alluvium. From a purely bureaucratic perspective, it looked like a redundant, underutilised trigger. That is certainly the impression I got over the years I have represented the electorate of Southern Downs.

I do not respond to what bureaucrats want; I represent the people of my electorate. When that proposal hit the table, people told me that they did not like it. Liza Balmain told me that she did not like it. Local landowners and our premier farming bodies made their voices loud and clear through the parliamentary committee process, which worked very well. They said that, even if it has only been triggered four times, the RIDA framework represents a vital, front-end structural shield. It is their peace of mind, even if it has only been used four times before. It prevents land use conflicts before they start. The people whom it is my duty to represent have spoken, and that is good enough for me.

I would like to spend the last half of my speech responding to some of the matters that have been enlivened by His Majesty’s most loyal opposition on the other side. The Labor Party have been learning all sorts of new words. Their lexicon has been growing faster than my 18-month-old son’s. I have heard words like ‘farmers’, ‘irrigators’, ‘farmers’ own money’, ‘hard work’, ‘alluvium’ and ‘landowners’ rights’. What does the Labor Party know about landowners’ rights? What did they do when they legislated to
take away from the people whom I represent the right to have a say on whether or not they have a wind farm next to them? I can see the member for Springwood over there. I remember writing to him when he was a minister and he said, ‘No. Nothing to see here.’ They say that they are the farmers’ friend and that they have been out there and listened. They had to get there using a GPS and with a cut lunch because it took them a whole day.

The Labor government is hollow on this, and I hear all these predictions that the LNP has been deserted by a few people who put a sign up. Let me give the Labor Party the drum. When I go to a pub like the Victory pub in Cecil Plains, the Sundowner pub in Millmerran, the Ballandean Tavern or the Criterion in Warwick there is nobody with a good word for Labor. They are sticking pins in their Albo dolls, and the rump that sits opposite is utterly silent on the things that they are doing like the EPBC Act interventions, which are going to undermine the property rights and the certainty that people I represent have in relation to their vegetation management. That is after all they have been through already and the Labor Party is utterly silent about this.
What about wind farms? I have mentioned previously that the rights of my constituents to object to a wind farm were taken away legislatively.

They put family against family. This made the community divided and forced people to endure eyesores when they did not want them. Their right to object was taken away legislatively so that the Labor government could rubberstamp all of this in Brisbane. How is that looking after the interests of country people? How is that looking after the property rights of individuals? They have sinned themselves out of any right to even use that word. They do not know what it means.

What about the blue dots? I remember complaining regarding Adavale for years to environment ministers including the ‘farmer’s friend’, as he called himself, the ‘foolish, feckless foe’ and the ‘friend of the fire ant’, but to no avail. Farmers were told that because some greenie, lefty activist in the department thought, ‘There might be a cycad here,’ they could not clear their land, they could not graze it and they could not cultivate it.

What about Dan McDonald, the farmer who had to clear mulga to feed his starving cattle? He was taken to court and brutally prosecuted at the behest of that Labor government for $112,000. When it finally got to the Court of Appeal, the judge said that it was an oppressive move by the Labor government. That is to put it mildly.

The farmer’s friend, they think so in their head. I say to those constituents of mine who are reading this speech or looking at the video of it that what they have seen is brazen hypocrisy on the part of the Labor Party. For years—for the entire time I have been in this place—they have done nothing but undermine the property rights, the financial viability and the welfare of country communities and landowners like this. I am not in any mood to be lectured to by the Labor Party, and I am not at all impressed to hear city Labor MPs saying, ‘Sharon sent me an email saying you have to stop this.’ Where was Sharon when the Labor Party was legislating to take away the rights of people in my community to object to wind farms?

Last of all, I speak of something very dear to my heart. When it came to looking after people on the land, farmers and communities in the bush, what did Labor do about Emu Swamp Dam? The town that ran out of water had to have water trucked to it and the Labor Party sat on its hands and did it and did not build Emu Swamp Dam. The Labor Party has sinned itself out of having any right to talk about these matters. It is utterly hypocritical. I support this bill. It is good legislation. I am proud to
be a part of a government that listens.