Send a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry | Darling Downs - Make a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry

Send a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry

287 emails sent

Please send a submission using our form below to the Parliamentary Inquiry. Together we can ensure the LNP government makes good on their promise to Darling Downs farmers. Personalise the message by adding a sentence or two of your own or changing the subject line.

The LNP have broken their promise to farmers. Contact Deputy Premier and Minister for Planning, Jarrod Bleijie and the Primary Industries and Resources Committee who are leading the Parliamentary inquiry on the proposed legislation.

Where do you live?

Compose your email

Name

Email

Phone

Please select your country via the flag dropdown on the left
The number is not valid in United States. Check number or click the flag to change country.
Invalid phone number

Subject:

To the Primary Industries and Resources Committee and the Honourable Deputy Premier and Minister for Planning, Jarrod Bleijie,

In October 2024, Pat Weir MP made a pre-election promise to protect the Condamine Alluvium, a Murray Darling Basin groundwater resource overlying the Great Artesian Basin that provides fresh water for farms, homes and towns on the black soil country of the Darling Downs, from coal seam gas.

In March 2026, without consultation with the public or impacted farmers, the Planning Minister Jarrod Bleijie, introduced laws into the Queensland Parliament that purported to implement that commitment. Tragically, these laws do the opposite.

This legislation strips key protections from Queensland’s best farming land on the Darling Downs, making it easier for gas companies to start drilling through the rich fertile soils that sit above the Condamine Alluvium.

Queensland’s best farmland on the Darling Downs now has less protections than other farmland throughout the State. This outcome is perverse to say the least and represents a betrayal of those farmers who have worked so hard to preserve their land and water for future generations.

The government must urgently withdraw the following elements of this  legislation and go back to the drawing board.

1     The removal of the need for a Regional Interest Development Approval in the mapped Condamine Alluvium CSG area

The Regional Planning Interests Act was introduced by the Newman government in 2014 with the intention of providing additional protections to areas of regional interest which are intrinsically valuable to the State, like Priority Agricultural Areas. This is achieved through the requirement of a Regional Interest Development Approval (RIDA) for any resource development that seeks to occur on prime agricultural land and/or including regionally significant water sources like the Condamine Alluvium. With no justification, this additional layer of protection has been removed for the Condamine Alluvium, the prime agricultural farmland it supports and its ongoing productive capacity.

Overall, the RPI Act is in need of reform to ensure that it better fulfills its objectives of protecting farmland, regional towns and strategic environmental areas. However in its current form it does provide a much needed layer of protection for farmland and regionally significant water sources like the Condamine Alluvium.

The decision to remove the operation of the RPI Act from the Condamine Alluvium CSG area is perverse. It means the impacts of gas on this prime agricultural land will no longer be assessed.

This is particularly inconsistent with the original commitment made by the member for Condamine Pat Weir who said on 8th October 2024;

“We have had a lot of concerns about the impact on the Condamine Alluvium. Some evidence that we’ve found recently regarding the integrity of some coal exploration holes has only added to that concern.  So it is our intention to make an amendment to the Regional Planning Interest Act where resource companies would have to go through a full RIDA process before any drilling could be done on that Condamine Alluvium. Obviously this applies to new drilling, but that would have to prove beyond any doubt that they would have no negative impact either above or below ground.”

2     Require new environmental authorities to have a ‘deemed condition’ requiring no release of contaminants

These contamination provisions, the cornerstone of these laws, is empty greenwashing. It fails to provide meaningful environmental protections for the following reasons:

-     There are over 2000 wells approved under existing environmental authorities for the mapped Condamine Alluvium CSG area. These environmental authorities already require gas companies not to release contaminants to waters. Presumably, under the existing regime, new wells would have this condition applied. So these reforms achieve nothing other than an administrative application change.

-     Worse, these laws introduce a complex regime with new wells covered by the new deemed condition in the Environmental Protection Act, and the old wells with the condition in the site specific environmental authority. We have recently seen wholesale changes made to environmental authority conditions under EA amendment applications that remove existing conditions. There is the possibility of gas companies requesting and being granted the removal of contaminant conditions in existing environmental authorities, leaving the 2000 already approved wells not subject to the new deemed condition and able to release contaminants.

There are elements of the new laws that represent a step forward, namely the requirement that deviated drilling be classified as an advanced activity, and the recognition that CSG-induced subsidence is a compensatable effect. However, this is only a very small first step in a mountain of work that is still required. Without effective farm-scale monitoring and independent impact assessment being applied, farmers still face a massively expensive and stressful uphill struggle against well-resourced multinational gas companies to seek compensation in the Land Court.

Despite the small positives, they are far outweighed by the faults in the Bill. It is imperative that the RPI protections remain in place for the Condamine Alluvium area which is extremely vulnerable to CSG-induced impacts and requires the extra scrutiny that this impact assessment provides. We cannot have our top producing food bowl and most productive Alluvium in Queensland at a clear disadvantage to other areas of regional interest in the State. Gas export profits cannot take precedence over critical long-term food and water security.

In addition, I object to the fact that impacted farmers and relevant local groups representing community and farming interests were not consulted prior to the introduction of this legislation, even though it represents a diminishment of the rights and protections applied to their farms and groundwater.

I hope that you will go back to the drawing board on the tabled legislation, properly consult with farmers and community members that have been left in the dark and finally enact your promise to strengthen protections for the Condamine Alluvium and its prime ag farmland from destructive gas drilling.

How we use the data you enter on this form

Do Gooder (the advocacy platform powering this online action) processes personal information from you that you enter on this form so that we can provide the functions and related services to you and The Campaigner (the organisation responsible for this online action) for their legitimate purposes, including possibly exporting it to other systems, and to effectively respond to enquiries and communications related to those services.

Specifically when you enter:

Your location data (residential address or postcode) it is used to locate your elected representative, to pre-populate your email signature and to provide The Campaigner with a visualisation of the location of the support for this campaign.
All other data you may enter, including your email address, name, telephone number, commentary and so on is used by The Campaigner to advocate for the campaign’s goals and where required may be sent to the target of the campaign.

The data collected by Do Gooder is also used by us in aggregate form to improve the service and may be held on your behalf outside your country of residence by our third party service providers. These providers are bound by contract to only use personal information on our behalf, in accordance with agreed terms. While the privacy laws of the country in which personal information is stored or transferred may be different from those in your country, we will always have safeguards in place when storing or transferring personal information. We will never sell, rent, loan or in any other way pass your information on to other parties other than to provide this service to you and The Campaigner.

The personal information collected by Do Gooder is held subject to a Data Processing Agreement between Do Gooder and The Campaigner in compliance with the EU's GDPR and Australian law.

Learn more about our privacy policy here

How is my data used?