Question to the Premier on community opposition to fracking

Mr FATCHEN (Mount Gambier) (14:54): My question again is to the Premier. Does the Premier accept that regional communities have a right to say no to fracking in their own backyard, particularly when farming security and clean green reputations are at risk? With your leave, ma'am, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr FATCHEN: At last week's country cabinet community forum in Mount Gambier, hundreds of residents made their opposition to fracking overwhelmingly clear, raising serious concerns about the risks to our aquifer, agricultural industries and regional economy, the very foundations of the Limestone Coast.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:55): The frank answer to the member for Mount Gambier's question is that the responsibility of what mining we allow and don't allow in this state rests with this parliament. That's who the responsibility rests with: this house and the one next door. Each of us in this house—all 47 of us—has the responsibility to make judgements around what mining activity happens in this state or not.

It's a collective responsibility, because the resources that are below the surface in the state of South Australia—of which there are a lot—belong to the people of South Australia. They don't belong to Beach, they don't belong to BHP and they don't belong to a farmer. They belong to the people of South Australia, so we have to make judgements around the regulatory arrangements and the processes that should be allowed or not allowed to facilitate that investment and the extraction of those minerals for the benefit of our people.

Where it has been done well we have been the beneficiaries as a state and as a people more broadly. Today, we announced that on the weekend we received what was one of the best emails I have seen in a while. I got an email on Sunday, which was forwarded to me by the Treasurer, from a DEM official. I read it, and it was the fact that we had just received a $25.9 million royalty payment from BHP as a result of the copper that has been extracted. It was a one-month royalty payment of the copper we have extracted from the Gawler Craton Olympic Dam. That $25.9 million represents the single biggest royalty payment that has ever been paid in the state's history.

The reason why I cite that is that it is just one example of how where mining is done well—done in accordance with best practice, engaging with traditional owners, engaging with regulatory authorities, environmental assessments—it creates extraordinary wealth for our state. The particularly profound opportunity that that represents for our state is that copper is such an important commodity for what the world needs in terms of advancing living standards, decarbonisation, electrification, the AI opportunity. It is a really important commodity. Where it is done well it is good.

In answer to the member for Mount Gambier's question, we have a collective responsibility to see this resource being utilised for the best interests of the state, and it would not be in the best interests of the state if that resource was tapped into at the expense of the aquifer or at the expense of the local environment in the South-East. It would not be, which is why that can never be allowed to happen, but we can only find out the answer to that question if we do the work, if we do the science and do the research

No government and no regulator in their right mind would approve fracture stimulation in the Limestone Coast if it was going to compromise the aquifer, or anywhere else for that matter. What we submit to the parliament is an opportunity to simply do that work, just as we can do everywhere else. If we accept the science in the Cooper Basin, why can't we accept the science in the Limestone Coast? Are there differences in the geology? Of course there are. Of course there are, but that's why we should do the work. That's why we should do the science.

To not do the science is to actively adopt a position of ignorance. Why would we do that? Why, as a state, would we say, 'We want to be ignorant to the science and the research to extract an opportunity for the state'? What we say is, 'Let's do the work,' and we want to do that in conjunction with the people of Mount Gambier and MacKillop, through active community consultation that the lifting of the moratorium would actively enable.