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Geological and Bioregional Assessments Roadshow

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Geological and Bioregional Assessments Roadshow  Wednesday 20 October 2021 - 9.45am to 4.10pm (AEDT)

9:45am Opening address

  • Nick Blong - First Assistant Secretary, Portfolio Strategy, DAWE

Session 1

Setting the Context

10.00- 11.25am (AEDT)

Session 2

Beetaloo Sub-basin

11.30-12.55pm (AEDT)

Session 3

Cooper Basin

1:30-2.55pm (AEDT)

Session 4

Closing Session

3:00pm-4.30pm (AEDT)

Mitchell Bouma

10.05 - 10.15am

Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment

Geological and Bioregional Assessments program

 

Dr Lisa Golding

11.35 - 11.45am

CSIRO

Water quality monitoring in the Beetaloo GBA region

Dr Cherry Mateo

1.35 - 1.45pm

CSIRO

Flood inundation modelling for Cooper Creek floodplain

Dr Justine Lacey

3.05 - 3.15pm

CSIRO

Stakeholder engagement overview –process and key findings

Dr Adam Bailey

10.20 - 10.30am

Geoscience Australia

Assessing the prospectivity for tight, shale and deep-coal gas resources in the Cooper Basin, Beetaloo Sub-basin and Isa Superbasin

Dr Sebastien Lamontagne

 11.50 - 12.00pm

CSIRO

Groundwater sources for the Mataranka Springs

Andrew Taylor

1.50 - 2.00pm

CSIRO

Characterising the connectivity between permanent waterholes and groundwater

Jane Coram/ Dr Andrew Heap

3.20 - 3.50pm

CSIRO / Geoscience Australia

Where to from here? Building on our successful collaboration

Dr Luk Peeters

10.35 - 10.45am

CSIRO

Causes and causal pathways – assessing direct and indirect impacts using causal networks

Dr Anthony O’Grady

12.05 - 12.15pm

CSIRO

Using natural capital accounting to track changes to ecosystem extent and condition

Dr Randall Donohue

2.05 - 2.15pm

CSIRO

Gas extraction and vegetation condition: identifying management-driven dynamics in vegetation cover

Grant Nay

3.55 – 4.05pm

Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment

Closing Address

Dr Kate Holland / Dr Luk Peeters

10.50 - 11.00am

CSIRO

GBA Explorer: an interactive visualisation tool to explore the assessments

Dr Cameron Huddlestone-Holmes

12.20 - 12.30m

CSIRO

Assessing potential impacts on water and the environment from shale and tight gas development in the Beetaloo GBA region

Dr Kate Holland

2.20 - 2.30pm

CSIRO

Assessing potential impacts on water and the environment from shale, tight and deep coal gas development in the Cooper GBA region

 

25 min Q&A

11.00am - 11.25am

 

25 min Q&A

12.30 - 12.55pm

25 min Q&A

2.30 - 2.55pm

25 min Q&A

4.05 - 4.30pm

 

Q&A Session transcripts

  • Session 1 Q&A

    Open transcript

    Andrew Bell:

    Kate is with us now live. Can you give us a little bit of an overview and give us an edited version of what you've done in your presentation, which just to re-emphasise, will be available post event on the website, Kate?

    Kate Holland:

    Thanks, Andy. Look, I guess making the talks for this roadshow, I was just amazed at how much content we've managed to squeeze into this GBA Explorer and it's all in context. In my talk, I click on the hydraulic fracturing node and you have a look at all of the modelling that we did. You can follow that through to all of the things that we care about in terms of the endpoints. So it's an amazing tool. Look, it was a lot of hard work from the team. But there's an amazing amount of science ready to support decision making in the future.

    Andrew Bell:

    How much road testing did you do? Because it's lovely to have a tool, isn't it? But it needs to be easy to use and intuitive. I mean, did it have several iterations?

    Kate Holland:

    Yeah, look, it was two years in the making for the method and also the web interface. We're really lucky that we were able to take advantage of some software that part of the team had developed. We also did a whole lot of user acceptance testing, where we reached out to different user groups. Again, our user panels have been critical for this, just that the breadth of people included in those user panels has meant that within easy reach and with an existing relationship, we're able to reach out and find out what works for different groups in different ways.

    Andrew Bell:

    As a tool, is it now set in stone or will there be GBA Explorer 2.0, 3.0, etc., etc.?

    Kate Holland:

    Look, it's designed to be updatable. We don't have any existing plans at the moment. But certainly it's all bolt on. We can add additional protective measures as we need. We can update all of the grids that underpin the assessment. As I said, that's not in the works at the moment. But that's certainly the way that it's been designed.

    Andrew Bell:

    Thanks, Kate. If I can bring the rest of you in, Adam and Mitch there. As I was preparing for this and typing stuff out, I actually had session one as setting the contest rather than setting the context. What I want to talk about next and whoever would like to jump in is, you've all talked about the collaborative approach, no contest at all. A question from me and don't forget those watching, you can ask questions in the live event Q&A box and that'd be really great. What have you learned about the collaboration between science and data as you've gone along? Perhaps I could start with you, Mitch, on that. What are the things you now know that you didn't know when you started?

    Mitchell Bouma:

    Thanks, Andy. Well, look, we'll talk a little bit about this later on as well. You'll hear from some of the high level executives from CSIRO and GA around that. But look, I think one of the things I've really valued, I'll talk a little bit more about learnings. But one of the things I really valued is that having this collaborative approach, it's got everyone working together from so many different fields of expertise. We've been able to develop really, really, really good relationships between the different agencies. Because of that, we've been able to develop something together and co-design and work agilely, something that's very hard to do quite often in a big, big program with lots of bigger organisations.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    So I think I've really valued both the ability to be adaptable, get great relationships with all these really fantastic people. I mean, you can't get away from the fact that these people, the scientists and everyone else that we're working with, that they're some really, really great experts in their field. So for me, that has been absolutely amazing. Because of that, I think we've been able to work so well together. We've worked to get some really, really good results in some really, really difficult circumstances. Working through COVID with trying to get this information together, it's just been fantastic. To do that and under these circumstances with such great people, I'm sure that we'll be able to benefit from this in the future. It will also benefit Australians as well.

    Andrew Bell:

    Yeah, thanks, Mitch. If I'd talk to you, Adam. Mitch just said it's a big program. Also we're in a big country, but these regions are, I think the technical term is humongously big, 28,000 square kilometres of Beetaloo, Isa is just over 8,000 square kilometres and then we got Cooper 130,000. What kind of practical challenges does that set for you when you start working on the ground?

    Adam Bailey:

    Yeah, look, a really good question. I guess it's worth remembering that from our point of view at GA and broadly from the geosciences, that's pretty much business as usual. The Cooper is massive, yes. But weirdly, even though it's the biggest of those, it's the one with the most data. It's actually got a huge amount of data compared to a lot of places where we typically work. I mean, I touched on it in my talk. But the Isa GBA region is really only a small representation of a much, much larger province. That's where I've been doing a fair bit of work in the rest of my role at GA over the last couple of years. That would have probably a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the amount of data that's in the Cooper.

    Adam Bailey:

    So really, I guess the answer to your question, there's a lot of interpretation, a lot of interpolation. There's a lot of being wrong. You might have all the data in the world that's going to suggest something will be there where. If you go out and have a look, that may not be the case. When you drill a hole, you might from seismic or from EM or any sort of modelling think there's going to be a certain formation or a certain depth. You might be a couple 100 metres off, you might be 10 metres off, but it may not be there at all.

    Adam Bailey:

    Then that's part of the thing I think that a lot of people love about geosciences. Certainly something I like is the fact that it's always a surprise. The best minds that get it right all the time can be wrong. All the data in the world realistically, when you're talking about data that only really shows you stuff at a really broad scale at very low resolutions typically, or one dimensional holes in the middle of thousands of square kilometres, there's lots of room for some creative thinking there, which is great.

    Andrew Bell:

    Luk, if I can ask you, I love that phrase. It's always a surprise there from Adam. Have you had many surprises along the way in the work you've done?

    Luk Peeters:

    Yes, of course. Well, my background is in geology and hydrogeology. Through this project, I had the pleasure to work with a lot of ecologists, hydrologists and geologists. So there was a lot of surprises, a lot of things I learned throughout things that were not intuitive, unfortunately, I can't bring any examples to mind. But if I can just pick up on what Adam was saying in that context of surprises and uncertainty.

    Luk Peeters:

    What we tried to do in that risk assessment, in that causal network approach is to really acknowledge that often there was a very limited knowledge base or evidence base available, even with all the extra work that we've done. We wanted to make sure that we acknowledged that uncertainty and that we did an assessment as well on the confidence that we had in our statements. So throughout the GBA Explorer, if you start drilling into that, you will see how much the strength of evidence that we have for our statements. We try to be as transparent and open about that. So that in the future, these things can be challenged, these can be changed, if new information becomes available.

    Andrew Bell:

    That's an interesting point about transparency. I guess I can come back to Kate in this because I guess the GBA Explorer is almost the ultimate tool of transparency, I hesitate to use the word, but I'm going to use the word they can play in that space and see exactly what there is and where it might go and all that kind of thing.

    Kate Holland:

    Yeah. Look, our objective is really to provide a robust and transparent assessment. Gosh, it's challenging explaining all of the decisions that we've made. There are hundreds of links in those networks that we built. Each of those links has the logic. Thank you, Luk. Also, all of the modelling that underpins all of the decisions that are made. So it brings that transparency and robustness and the ability for everybody to go in and query, why each of the decisions were made. I was wondering, Mitch, just in the interest of the background photo that you've got, you and I have. Cooper Creek is a fantastic environment. I just wondered if you wanted to reflect on some of the interest that our users have had in particularly in the LiDAR data that we collected and the flood model. Sorry to hijack the conversation.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    Thanks, for that. Thanks, Kate.

    Andrew Bell:

    Hijack away, Kate.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    So you'll hear a little bit later on from Justine about the user panel process. But that was also a really valuable part of the program, allowing us to talk to all the different the stakeholders, the community groups, the people that live and work in the regions that we're working in. Out of the user panel for the Cooper, specifically, one of the things we really heard was that the channel country and the floodplains of Cooper Creek is a critical knowledge gap, I suppose, in terms of just how often the floods and what the effect of the floods are for the environment and for water recharge and what the potential risks that might exist from any new operations in the unconventional gas space that might occur. So out of that, it effectively allowed us to pivot but adjust what we were focusing some of our field investigations on. From that, we redirected some funding to go out and collect LIDAR data.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    So we flew LIDAR across all of the Cooper Creek floodplain . I think that might be the first time in Australian history that the whole lot has been flown in one hit. From that LIDAR data, we actually developed a hydraulic flood inundation model as well for Cooper Creek. Now that flood model in itself was something that we heard very clearly from all of our stakeholders that they were really interested in and wanted to see.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    CSIRO, and some really, really clever folk in CSIRO and with the help of our other scientists in the program, developed that flood model now. It is one of the legacies of the program that is highly sought after from all sorts of people. We've had a lot of people asking for access to it, had a lot of hits from the Geoscience Australia portal where the LiDAR data is hosted, downloading the LiDAR data that underpins that flood model. So yeah, that is a really great outcome. Now people can take that model and use it to put in their infrastructure and see how a potential flood might be affected by whatever infrastructure might be put in there. That can be used by anyone, because as you said, before our program, everything is transparently available that we've used or created. So I think that's a fantastic outcome.

    Andrew Bell:

    If I can ask and I don't know who would like to talk about this. But you've talked about stakeholders. Clearly you've got this marriage between science and data. But you've got stakeholders there. It's like a three-legged stool. I guess language and how you talk is very important, not just for this project, but I guess it informs future projects. Have you learned certain ways of talking to people on the ground and they've informed you by the way they talk back to you? Anyone can talk to that?

    Kate Holland:

    I'll jump in.

    Andrew Bell:

    Yeah, Kate.

    Kate Holland:

    If that's all right. Look, it's, I guess, we learned lessons along the way. I think we overwhelmed our audiences at the first user panel with our death by PowerPoint, which it's the traditional mechanism for communicating by scientists. Look, it's been a wonderful learning journey. I think I've probably got the most out of the conversations with the Shire Mayors in western Queensland. They really know their communities. I guess it's that the user panels have given us access to those voices and audiences that we wouldn't normally have as members of the National Science agencies as we are. So that's been a fantastic opportunity for us. We've also had really good engagement from our government and industry peoples as well.

    Kate Holland:

    But I think it's really those regional communities that we've been able to reach out to. I'll give a plug to Justine's talk in session four. We had a formal scientific monitoring and evaluation of the value of the user panels. It's a social science piece of work rather than the biophysical scientists that we all are. I think it's added enormous value to the program.

    Andrew Bell:

    That's very interesting that actually, we forget social science, which was something, dare I say, I studied in university in the 1970s, sort of gone a bit out of fashion. But by combining the physical science and the social science, that's adding to the fact that the stakeholders are heard and feel they are there and part of the process rather than being talked at, by death by PowerPoint, if I may. That's a wonderful phrase. If you've got any questions out there, please use the Q&A box. I've got a couple here already. Starting with some of the fundamental one, how likely is industry to take up these opportunities being investigated in the region selected for the GBA assessments? I don't know who can speak to that one. Is that one for you, Mitch?

    Mitchell Bouma:

    Look, I can give a bit of an answer to that. But maybe Adam, if you can follow up with your much more technical knowledge of resources that are actually available. So we've engaged with industry through the user panel process. We heard quite clearly how interested in the resources that industry were and that they gave regular updates at the user panels, what their intentions were. So we have heard that there is interest there. But like we're sort of talking about, we're talking about within the next five to 10 years that we're aiming for, that's really the industry timeframe that we were looking at. Adam, I don't know, if you want to add any more to that.

    Adam Bailey:

    Yeah, I'm happy to add to that. Look, I think movements of companies in these areas really demonstrate that there is interest in all three of the areas, even the Isa, which didn't move through to stage three because it is a while off and much further behind in the development chain. You've got multiple companies in the Beetaloo, as we see in the news and as local communities will be aware.

    Adam Bailey:

    Obviously, the Cooper is Australia's largest developed onshore basin. They're always looking for new plays and new frontiers there. So I think all of these places are on the radar and all of them have been recently invested in by small and large companies. But I think a lot of the answer to how likely are they to be interested comes down to how well programs like this actually communicate. That while there are some issues and risks around these sorts of things, they can be mitigated, they can be managed, the processes are in place. Government's there to support. More importantly, I think from our perspective is, as Kate really touched on, is that there are programs like ours that are willing to listen to the communities and the locals and local government and everything to make sure that their concerns are heard and addressed. More importantly, that when we're communicating to them, we're not killing them by PowerPoint and doing that white coat syndrome sort of thing.

    Adam Bailey:

    So you don't just get some hoity toity scientists coming in using big words. It's over explaining things when just breaking things down into layman's terms is a much better approach. I think that's something I've gotten a lot out of in this program as well myself and not even talking just to community members or companies or anything, but actually talking to other scientists who are much more established in their fields than I am in mine. They're using words that I use every day and being met with stone-faced responses because just different terms for different things in different fields and different knowledge bases. So just trying to make sure that meaning is passed effectively between stakeholders at various levels.

    Andrew Bell:

    Yes, that use of language is so important. I wouldn't have dared say hoity toity. I now have permission Adam to say hoity toity. That's fantastic. Risk. Now, don't get hoity toity with me now. There was talk of risk. It's a word that gets people a little bit worried. I don't know if there's anyone who can talk to that. How do you converse with stakeholders about risk? There's a danger, I guess with by using synonyms, that they aren't quite the same as risk, and there are the different kinds of risk. Is part of the conversation with on the ground stakeholders and between yourselves, there's an education element to it. Has anyone got any thoughts on that?

    Luk Peeters:

    I'll jump in and feel free to-

    Andrew Bell:

    Yeah. Go for it.

    Luk Peeters:

    To follow up. Communication of risk as you say, it's a very difficult field. Ultimately, it comes down to trust. Do you trust the person who's communicating to you about risk? Do you trust that they have their data, that they have their science right? So that's why we are trying to ... That's why we went out and engaged with stakeholders, why we have these user groups, and try to demonstrate that indeed, even if we didn't have the time to build that in depth trust, that at least all of our data is there, that is transparent.

    Luk Peeters:

    As far as on a technical level, the way we did the risk assessments, we tried to be very careful in how we use the language within the causal network and in the reports, to really break it down into what is about likelihood. Is it possible for something to happen? What is a change? What is the material change that can happen? What is the consequence? What are the things that can be mitigated? So we try as much as possible to be consistent in our language and to be as intuitive as possible in how we use it.

    Andrew Bell:

    A group we haven't really talked about much so far are state and territory governments. I'm a layperson here. Where do they sit in this process? Are they sort of sitting with the people on the ground, looking on as you do the work or are they almost like a bridge between those stakeholders on the ground and the work being done by CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, the Department and the Bureau? Who can speak to that?

    Mitchell Bouma:

    Thanks, Andy. So we work pretty closely with the different state and territory departments. We work with them both as a part of the user panel group. So we've leverage their expertise and their existing relationships with the communities to make sure that we worked quite closely with them, so that we were aware of community understanding and to help improve our engagement that way. But we also worked with them to help inform the science of the program.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    So, there was an advice function that was provided by the technical agencies in the States because they're the people who work with this information and with the community on a daily basis. They're the people who really help us get down to that fine grained detail. So they're the people who really know this, each of the regions and the environmental and geological and water resources in those areas.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    Kate, I don't know if you have any other insights around the user panel process and how we worked with the states. We might hear a bit more about some of this when we talk about the specific regions and the results from the program in the other sessions as well.

    Andrew Bell:

    We talked about community understanding and one question has come in, is about the level of involvement in terms of identification of what is important to them because you've got different interests, lowercase i here. You've got to make them, I guess, coalesce rather than do that. You've talked about language you've used and perhaps not come along with your PowerPoints. But how much listening have you done? Has that been part of the learning that you're now not so much listening more, but listening differently? Have you had any experiences you can draw upon?

    Kate Holland:

    I'll jump in. If that's all right, Andy.

    Andrew Bell:

    Thanks, Kate.

    Kate Holland:

    So I mentioned death by PowerPoint at the start. Look, I think we changed our agenda from a series of science presentations, where we were desperate to share the wonderful work that we're all so excited about. We interspersed our awesome science talks by hearing from different parts of the user panels. So listening to people from regional communities, what mattered to them, what industry was interested in. I think, other part that, as I said, the monitoring and evaluation reports that Justine will talk about in session four. She uses interviews as her social science method.

    Kate Holland:

    It's really, really nice hearing first person accounts of the work or the interactions that you've had with the user panel. So interviewee and they're all de-identified. But it's really nice to hearing in their own words their experiences, I think, again, from Justine's reports, their role is an advisory role, so shere's no need to achieve consensus. So differing views are welcomed in those user panels. I think that was a real highlight of why it worked really well for us.

    Andrew Bell:

    In an age of COVID, Mitch, you mentioned COVID. I guess those conversations had to change in nature. But did you have any advantage that those relationships were already there before you had to flick over to various platforms, mainly technological, which we all love?

    Mitchell Bouma:

    Yeah, that's right. We did. We were very lucky that our program started just before COVID. We were actually able to go out and meet with the different stakeholders, the community groups, the people that live in work in their region, or close to, as close to as we could. That was really beneficial. So hopefully, at some point in the future, if we have another program or if there are other programs that think about leveraging a user panel approach, getting out and meeting people in their communities, seeing everything from their perspective on the ground is a real, real benefit.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    Now, obviously, with COVID, we couldn't do that. So we did move to a virtual approach to the user panel process, which meant necessarily that we couldn't run them for whole days and talk for ages. So we did have to adapt and try to deliver our information and hear from them within the times that people can actually spend looking at a computer screen, because it is a lot harder to sit behind a computer screen for a full day than it is to sit in a room and talk to people and have breakout sessions and have chats and coffee and that sort of stuff. Now, I wouldn't say that we 100% got those virtual ones right. But I think we started listening to what people were saying after each of the virtual sessions to try and adapt the virtual user panel meeting so that it did meet as many of the needs of the different people as possible.

    Andrew Bell:

    Sounds like there's very much dynamism in the approach. I hate to use the J word, but I will. It has been a journey. Tanya Paul, from the Northern Territory Government in Darwin sent in this question, "Will the casual networks be adaptable? For example, can other endpoints or nodes be added in future?" So I guess that's addressing the kind of dynamism. Who can answer that?

    Luk Peeters:

    I can jump in there.

    Andrew Bell:

    Thanks, Luk.

    Luk Peeters:

    As Kate mentioned before, we've designed the system so that it can be extended and that it can be changed. So what you see here in our GBA Explorer is a snapshot in time of our current understanding, where we go to within the project. But in theory, we can always add different end points, other links and change evaluations. How we're going to do that in practice, that's another question. But at least it is definitely possible to update that network and to make this a more life and dynamic tool.

    Andrew Bell:

    I think we've clearly heard from all four of you that you are so at one with that dynamism. Another question that's come through, "How will these results assist in reducing the current duplication of requirement, state, territory, federal, when submitting a resource development application? How is that work, has it influenced how things might develop in the future? Who can then talk to that?"

    Mitchell Bouma:

    Obviously, our work is designed to support and be as usable as possible to a range of different stakeholders, but particularly to the regulators and industry that are going to be operating in these regions. Now, regulators, they have their own sets of work standards. But our work is really designed to provide that level of assurance that there is a huge amount of science and detailed technical work that underpins each of those regulatory decisions that will need to be made at some point in the future. Now, our work doesn't get rid of the need for regulators at any level to do that work. But what it does do is puts everyone on a level playing field, gives everyone a holistic view of all of the baseline information related to water and the environment, up to our point in time.

    Mitchell Bouma:

    It clearly steps through with the GBA Explorer, the cause-and-effect relationships of the industry operation through to those protected matters that the regulators need to look at. So it's all there. It's designed to give regulators that level of comfort, but also to hopefully make their job easier because we've already done that level of work for them. But yeah, like I said, it isn't going to mean that regulators don't need to do their job. They'll still have to do an assessment and that sort of thing. But hopefully with our information, it will be easier and everyone has access to the same data and information to underpin those.

    Andrew Bell:

    Information is so important. I think our chat is coming to an end. We can wrap it up. Thank you so much, Mitch, Kate, Adam, Luk, for being agile and nimble, which we all have to be these days. Thank you very much for sharing your passion. It's literally come through the computer and TV screen here in the studio. Thank you so much.

     

    SESSION ONE Q&A END

  • Session 2 Q&A

    Open transcript

    Andrew Bell:

    Thank you, Cameron, there. Well, four presentations about the Beetaloo Sub-basin, all jam-packed full of information. We've got a trifecta from the CSIRO just to wrap up this session and we've got Lisa, Sebastien and Anthony. Let's start with you, Lisa Golding. In the little time we've got left before the lunch break, just one or two personal reflections after this work. It's been going on for four years, and as Mitch Bouma said earlier on today, it's ... This is something of a celebration. Any reflections on that work from a personal point of view from you?

    Lisa Golding:

    Yeah, thank you. I do agree. It is a chance to celebrate all the work that's been done. Certainly, I found the work that we're involved in with the water quality aspect of it provided us with a great example to demonstrate how we can integrate these tools of chemistry, direct toxicity assessment and modelling to provide a really robust paradigm that can be used in risk assessment.

    Lisa Golding:

    Definitely, one of the things that shone through with this work was how site-specific these risk assessments need to be. The chemistry demonstrated how just between two wells that were separated by 123 kilometres, accessing different shale gas formations, how the chemistry differed between those. Again, that was reflected in the direct toxicity assessment and it's driven largely by the geogenic contaminants that are coming through and driving that chemical composition. It also highlighted that, in terms of future work, we need to place the emphasis on some of the chemical analysis to identify those organic compounds that just require more analytical techniques to be developed.

    Lisa Golding:

    Each of these techniques of chemistry, direct toxicity assessment and modelling, they have their strengths and weaknesses and that's why, when they come together, they complement each other. So, especially in the case of direct toxicity assessment, we can determine how much of a risk these wastewaters pose, even in the absence of not knowing what all the chemical compounds are. When we're focused on a biological response, we can use that to direct us in terms of what the risk will be and then we can use that in modelling, so that was the approach that we took to combine all those three tools. So, thank you and I think we've provided some really high impact publications through this work.

    Andrew Bell:

    Yes. Thanks, Lisa. There's all kinds of collaboration. There's collaboration between disciplines as well as between people, and when that works, it is a powerful tool. Sebastien, any, in brief, any personal reflections on the work that you've done?

    Sebastien Lamontagne:

    Sure. Well, it's always a great opportunity to be able to work on some of those large regional aquifers in Australia and a lot of the information we collected for this study will also be useful for other purposes. For me, personally, it was very rewarding to engage and work with our colleagues and collaborators in the Northern Territory. This paid up handsomely for this project when we could not travel and the work could still go on, so my thanks to them again today.

    Andrew Bell:

    Thanks, Sebastien. Finally, to you, Anthony O'Grady. We've had Rod Dann contact us there, Anthony, to congratulate you on your work on natural capital accounting. Rod says, "Hope it continues in some capacity in the future," so props to you. You're inside now, so no planes, no crows and a background of a wall and a white coat, but any ... one or two personal reflections on the work you've done?

    Anthony O'Grady:

    Well, firstly, I'll thank Rod for his comments. I can certainly ... I certainly hope that this keeps going and that the work that we've done in the program provides a foundation for that future monitoring that just ... so important part of all these assessments that, as a team, we don't typically see. So, hopefully we've provided that basis for that ongoing monitoring and measurement into the future so that we can keep track of the impacts.

    Anthony O'Grady:

    As a broader reflection on the program, I think it's one of those rare opportunities where you get to work with so many people from so many disciplines. Bringing together this much information is always a challenge, but to see it come together the way it has, has been quite inspiring and quite fulfilling as well.

    Andrew Bell:

    Thanks, Anthony, and thanks to Sebastien and also there to Lisa. So many people combining for this work and if I may, just before we go into the lunch break, a few people who've been working really hard behind the scenes to make sure we got back on track and I'd like to thank the production team, both here in the studio and remotely for their support.

    Andrew Bell:

    Right. Lunch break time. We'll be back in 21 minutes, which is half past one Eastern, one o'clock South Australia, half past 12 Queensland, noon in the Territory and half past 10 if we have anyone watching from WA. Join us then.

  • Session 3 Q&A

    Open transcript

    Andrew Bell:

    And thanks there to Kate for her presentation and yet more evidence of the collaboration which runs right through this project. Well, we can now go live with your questions, use the live event Q&A box. And we have... Most of our contributors live. We've got Andrew, we've got Kate, we've got Cherry, we also got Jai to help her out. And Anthony O'Grady has also rejoined us on behalf of Randall. So if I could start going round the panel, so to speak, just starting with you, Cherry. From the work that you've done, what are your personal reflections? One of the lesson from it, perhaps, you've learned. How you experienced this project?

    Cherry May Mateo:

    As for me, it was just rewarding to work on this project. As I've said in my presentation, the Cooper Creek is very complex. I'm not saying that just like saying that, it's very complex. It was indeed one of the most complex things that we've done in our team. So just the size of it was double of what we usually do in our team. At first, I was just a bit doubtful that how we could do it. But then here it is, we did it. And we're just so happy to be able to deliver this project and make it available to the people. So, yeah, so for me, it's a very rewarding experience overall.

    Andrew Bell:

    Yeah. Jai, you've been working alongside. Have you got anything to add? Well, we didn't see you in the presentations, but what are your experiences?

    Jai Vaze:

    This was sort of a unique project because we have done a lot of flood modelling before but never handled something as complex as the Cooper. And when I actually spoke with the company, which markets MIKE, the whole modelling framework, they were quite surprised that we are attempting to do it because they haven't tried it themselves. And at the end, we had a lot of issues with the LiDAR, halfway through we have to stop because of cyclones coming through, and then sticking up things in. But at the end, when we finished, I did share some results with MIKE or DHI, and they are quite impressed with that and they might be asking CSIRO permission or the department permission to use it as their marketing material that their model can even do this. So this was one of the biggest flood modelling project that I have done. And so quite happy with it.

    Andrew Bell:

    And I guess good team-building exercise as well because you've got the results.

    Jai Vaze:

    Yes. And it was also that we did do what the stakeholders wanted. So the project was very well managed. There was continuous discussion with the stakeholders, and the one in two-year and one in five-year floods were selected based on the input from them. So we did exactly what the stakeholders wanted. That was a good experience.

    Andrew Bell:

    A happy stakeholder is a good stakeholder, I think it's fair to say. Andrew Taylor, you've got quite a bit of skin in the game, you've got 15 years or more of experience? Did you learn new things during this whole process?

    Andrew R Taylor:

    Absolutely, yeah. Working on the assessment was wonderful. It's always great working on these large, multidisciplinary, regional-scale assessments. And for us, there hadn't actually been a lot of shallow groundwater work done within the Cooper Basin itself. So that was something that was unique to geomorphology, we've talked about the arid zone hydrology, both surface water, and groundwater, again, was unique. And there were lots of challenges associated with the fieldwork, but it's always wonderful to get the opportunity to collect new data, and then integrate it with data that's been collected by other people in the assessment as well as other teams.

    Andrew Bell:

    And, Anthony, we heard from Randall, What can you say from your own experience or just the chat within the team working in that area of vegetation condition?

    Anthony O'Grady:

    The first thing I'd say is that the Cooper region is such an iconic region, nationally. So for the millennia, it's been a sort of an important centre of trade and culture for indigenous peoples, and you know post-European settlement, and it still carries the mystique of the Burke and Wills expedition, supports the pastoral industries and things like that. And I suppose that underpinning goal of that is the condition of the region itself, and its capacity to support both livelihoods almost forever. For us as a team in this project, it's been really exciting to see how far we can get without actually being able to get on the ground and do the on-ground measurements and things to understand that and to provide those data sets that will set up the basis for the longer-term monitoring of that condition, so that we can ensure that it stays iconic, forever.

    Andrew Bell:

    Before lunch we heard about the Beetaloo Sub-basin are there any compare and contrast from the experience or just the work from your point of view?

    Anthony O'Grady:

    One of the things that we've done in this program is tried to be as consistent as possible in all the science that we applied across the two bioregions and all across the three bioregions in fact. And so what we're moving towards is some really high resolution... Whether it's the flood modelling that you saw here or the vegetation condition modelling, really high-resolution data in terms of spatial and temporal information at what are basically subnational scales very big basins. So that's really good. It provides a pathway for doing these types of large-scale assessments at high resolution into the future.

    Andrew Bell:

    Always things to learn. Kate, we loved your charts, some of them look like would sit in the matrix, some of your graphs and stuff. From this specific of the Cooper Basin, what lingers in your mind?

    Kate:

    I think it's the opportunity that we've been given to go and collect data. So collecting the LiDAR data to be able to build the flood model... Building the flood model there's just terabytes of data in that, the work that Andrew spoke about. So we've worked on these big assessments for a while. And one of the really good things about this program has been the ability to go out there and collect real-data, and not just keep using the same data but actually contributing to new knowledge. So I think that's been the biggest contribution. And obviously, also the assessment methodology that we've developed, which we didn't get to hear about earlier in the session. But look, they’re the two big things for me and I can't go past the interactions we've had with stakeholders through the user panels. That has been brilliant, as I said before.

    Andrew Bell:

    Question for Andrew Taylor from Andrew McDougall. It's all the Andrews. The waterholes that showed water levels more similar to bore levels near the Kyabra Creek outcropping, did these also appear to be the ones that had water chemistry more similar to the bores? The waterholes that showed water levels more similar to bore levels, Kyabra Creek, did these also appear to be the ones that had water chemistry more similar to the bores? Andrew?

    Andrew R Taylor:

    The short answer is because our focus was on the permanent waterholes in the mid-to-lower Cooper, we didn't... Whilst we conducted the spatial analysis at a regional scale, the fieldwork and more of the data analysis was done around the important waterholes that we had access to. So it's something we're still working through. So most people would know from the fact sheets that we're looking to publish a bunch of papers now. So it's not something we've looked at yet just because the focus was mainly on the mid-to-low Cooper. So probably something worked through as we analyse more of the data and work towards publishing a paper.

    Andrew Bell:

    Another question that's come through will future resource development in the Cooper region impact inundation across the floodplains and the connectivity of wetlands? Obviously, you're looking at a specific region, which is a huge region but everything is connected. Who can speak to that?

    Cherry May Mateo:

    Yeah. So that's something that we could look at using the inundation model. I've explained in the presentation, that there are some things that could be changed in the model to reflect this changes, and then we could look at that. But at the moment, that's something that we have not looked at yet. But, yeah, it could be done in the future.

    Andrew Bell:

    I'm talking of the future, can I pose this to all of you, you've been talking about what you've learned over the period? Have any of you got any specific ideas of how that can be harnessed in other places? Or in other projects? Is there anything that was a sort of light-bulb moment about this kind of work?

    Kate:

    There's huge opportunities, in terms of the methods and the transparency, and the robustness of the causal network or the spatial causal network methods that we've developed. And providing ultimately, a knowledge base that industry and government has full line of sight to really improve regulatory efficiency is where the vision for that work can go. And it's not limited to just the oil and gas industry. There's opportunities in other extractive industries. There's also opportunities in other areas where maybe there's some climate change issues that you want to be able to map out the connections between the drivers and the things that you care about, the endpoints. So we think as a risk-based framework, it has a lot of opportunities to inform how we manage and make decisions.

    Andrew Bell:

    I guess it's that thing where you start on a project and there is a destination but along the way, you pick up knowledge that you never expected, which is really handy. A question about connectivity between permanent waterholes and groundwater sources. So I don't know that's an Andrew or Cherry question. But is there the connectivity between permanent waterholes and groundwater sources in the Cooper region? Who'd like to answer that?

    Andrew R Taylor:

    We can see from some slides that I presented on the whole of the Cooper Creek catchment, there are some. And that's particularly driven by the hydrogeology. So there were some that were occurring up in the outcrop area of the Great Artesian Basin. So this is the Jurassic to Cretaceous sandstones. And that's quite a common thing in the outcropping or recharge area of the Great Artesian Basin where you get springs and you get permanent waterholes occurring. Other parts, again, it's from what we've looked at, it seems to be limited. So again, there was those few in Cooper Creek and the Wilson River. But other than that, not a great deal.

    Andrew Bell:

    Anthony, as we said earlier, you were both on Beetaloo and Cooper, how different were they? How did the approach worked? Do you start from the same initial plan? Or do you have to sort of adapt quite rapidly?

    Anthony O'Grady:

    To be quite honest, it's actually quite easily applied in most places. It's built on a foundation of defining ecosystem assets and defining them explicitly in time and space. And so, yes, the two systems are very different but the approaches are very similar. And so the types of work that we did whether that's the biodiversity assessments or Randall's condition assessments or any of that work can be applied to anywhere in Australia. So you could take a similar approach to Isa region if that comes at some point in the future or to the Pilbara or anywhere. And I think, shortly, you'll end up with different answers and different insights. But I think the framing and the framework is quite systematic and generally applicable to most places.

    Andrew Bell:

    And if I can sort of go around the table, so to speak, as we draw to a close in this Q&A session of session three, how is the work you've done informed you as to where you might go next? Cherry, what would be the lasting impact of the work you've done?

    Cherry May Mateo:

    For the work that we've done I think that there's still a lot of ways that we could go forward because, as I've mentioned in my presentation, it's just for the current scenario. So, yeah, it would be interesting to go forward and look at the future scenarios and investigate the impact of different development in the basin.

    Andrew Bell:

    And, Jai, if you got anything to add to what Cherry said?

    Jai Vaze:

    Yes, the model has been considered... What we have achieved here will be used for the next 10 or 15 years. So I will give example. So GISERA which is another gas and resource program, there have been a request from them to get involved, that they want to put a project where they want to use the model developed here for any further developments in Cooper. And it applies to... All the work that has been done as part of the project that will be used for multiple, different purposes for the next 10, 15 years. So it's a big achievement, I think.

    Andrew Bell:

    It's a huge, huge legacy. How do you see that the legacy of the work on the Cooper era, Andrew Taylor?

    Andrew R Taylor:

    I think it's going to be very well received. I think one of the big things is that it just allows for the prioritisation of investment in future water planning in the Cooper. It will give regulators, other private proponents industry, the ability to prioritise their investment in planning around their developments. So I think that's really the key thing.

    Andrew Bell:

    Yes, thanks. Thanks there, Andrew. And to you, Anthony, if you can reflect as well. But we've also got a question from Andrew MacDougall, specifically at the work you're talking, on behalf of Randall. And Andrew asked, "Would it be possible to assign a 10-year layer over the top of cover assessment over time to determine trends?

    Anthony O'Grady:

    Yeah, absolutely could... Well, I mean, the condition cover is spatially complete. So it covers the whole area. So tracking 10-year through time it shouldn't actually be a problem, I would imagine. So we didn't do that. But it wouldn't particularly within the accounting framework, it will just be a different reporting unit, and so it'd be quite feasible to do.

    Andrew Bell:

    Finally, Anthony, the legacy, you have a particular view?

    Anthony O'Grady:

    Yeah, I think I've sort of touched on it before. Cooper, particularly, it's such an iconic region and to be able to bring together this much information at this sort of resolution will not only be very powerful for understanding the impacts of the gas industry development in the region but for all sorts of much broader development base, whether that's the impacts of tourism or the impacts of the pastoral industry going forward. I think that the datasets and the information that's been brought together has much broader relevance for all the stakeholders in the region than just the gas industry.

    Andrew Bell:

    Yes, that thing changed one thing, and everything else changes? Literally, a ripple effect. Kate, if you could reflect also on the legacy, but we've also got a question for you here as well, specifically. Let's start with the question, "How did you take into account regulation or the requirements of state, territory, Commonwealth regulations? How did you deal with that?

    Kate Holland:

    So look, the Cooper is interesting and a fabulous environment. But it's also covered by three different jurisdictions in terms of regulations. So we've got South Australian legislation, the Queensland legislation, and obviously the Commonwealth legislation over the top. And that's what the reality of industry. So we had the opportunity to work with both of the states, as well as the Commonwealth regulators. And one of the really cool things about the method is that for each of those links, as we work through those systematic questions, we're having a look at how to mitigate the change that's represented by that link. And so in that way, we're able to document where the legislation fits in each of the links in the causal network.

    Andrew Bell:

    And we got there. Thank you so much to all of you for your presentations, and your reflections. And also the bigger picture of how the work on the Cooper Basin is actually going to impact not only on this particular project but on other things to come. Thank you so much for talking with us, Cherry, Jai, Andrew, Randall earlier on, and Anthony again from Tassie, and Kate as well. Thank you so much.

  • Session 4 Q&A

    Open transcript

    Justine Lacey:

    Well, let me see. Well, I'm a social scientist, so I tend to think only in social systems and people interactions and things like that. So I'm going to bring a whole lot of bias to the way I talk about this issue probably, but I think when the department makes this decision and it's a really clever design decision, I think that they make up front when they're designing a whole kind of national scale program of work, the one thing they're starting to do is thinking about who's going to be using the science, who's going to be trusting the science, who's going to be looking at it. And they're really thinking about the user of that science in the kind of the front end design of the program.

    Justine Lacey:

    And I think one of the quotes that I use in that presentation is one of my favourites. And it's about where is remote. And someone's talking about these decisions being made remotely. Now, if you're in far western Queensland, Canberra is remote, right. But if you're in Canberra, you feel like you're at the centre of the decision making. And so it does really depend on where you stand. And people in those regions really valued, while we had the chance, the chance to talk about the science and do the science and that was important to the scientists as well in the places that we were talking about.

    Andrew Bell:

    You talked about the effectiveness of using early input from those user panels. So I guess that's a way that you start winning trust as well, that people know that they're being heard.

    Justine Lacey:

    So the department does a couple of things from the outset. They make the decision to have the user panels and they sit down and they develop a set of objectives and building trust is one of those objectives. And you're sort of thinking, "Oh, you need a lot of contact. You need a lot of lead time. You don't just build trust off one or two interactions." But you do see the trust starting to form, not from the get go, absolutely. Because that would be strange. We don't all just kind of form trust when we meet someone for the first time, but you do see it starting to form into the second year and I think COVID changes the world quite dramatically and everything from in place and face to face goes online. But those early stage interactions build a lot of social capital, which helps that transition and maintains a lot of that relationship into an online platform as well.

    Andrew Bell:

    As a social scientist, can you measure the building of trust? Have you got tools to do that?

    Justine Lacey:

    In terms of measuring the trust, what we were looking at was how the interactions changed. So when people first came to the table, what they would talk about, what was important to them was being able to represent their interest to other parties. What they start to find more and more effective over time is hearing about other people's perspectives around the same issue. And if I can nerd out and say, what it was really good at in design risk governance is usually a way of managing kind of risk that we say can be done if we bring lots of different perspectives together, by not forcing these panels to kind of form consensus about issues, reach decisions, but just provide advice based on their kind of their local knowledge or whatever their expertise was in the region.

    Justine Lacey:

    That was really freeing for them to just kind of bring that openly and respectfully. There were people in there that disagreed about different things and they didn't necessarily have to change that. But the exchange was really, really important, not just between the panellists, but between the panel members and the department and between the panel members and the scientists.

    Andrew Bell:

    And I guess the trust is every which way, isn't it? It's between those on the locals and the scientists, those who come to their communities, but also between... It's not a homogeneous community, any community, however remote it is. And allowing the disagreement, that's a bit of a risk, but does that yield great benefit?

    Justine Lacey:

    Well, disagreement doesn't necessarily become the focus, right? So if people had a different view, just say about gas development, quite generally, the conversations in GBA are about the science. And so this actually becomes the central focus. We're talking about the development of the assessment. What is in focus? What is the latest bit of science that's been done? Where is the science going next in terms of where is it happening in the region? And so this kind of central focus is not necessarily disarming of that disagreement. There is disagreement sometimes in the room. It's always really respectful the way these processes are run. And I think people just became comfortable in being able to have their view. There was no kind of grandstanding about differences in views. People just recognised that they were there. That was okay. No one was trying to change people's views. That wasn't the purpose of the GBA.

    Andrew Bell:

    That's all part of understanding place as well, I'm guessing. If I can bring in Kate and Mitch into the conversation as well, for both of you, perhaps starting with how you think the work will move from now. We were here to sort of pull all the strands together. How will the work that you've done and those relationships we've just been hearing about, how can they be leveraged? Let's start with Kate.

    Kate Holland:

    Oh, look, I guess it's sad to see the end of the GBA Program and this is the culmination of four years of really lots of work by 100 scientists. And, again, we've had our final meetings with the user panels. Look, they do provide a really nice communication vehicle for between all of those different stakeholders. And if there are opportunities, and I know that the department has explored ways of keeping those relationships ongoing, that would be hugely valuable from our perspective. I guess that's one of the outcomes of having project based, project really, and relationships that come and go. Mitch, do you want to add to that?

    Mitch Bouma:

    Sure, sure. No worries. So it's a good question. And it's certainly one that we get asked all the time, whenever we do a bit of engagement with whoever it may be. So I think there are two really good examples, I suppose, of where some of, I suppose, the methodologies that we developed under the program maybe moving forward in the future. So I know specifically, quite relevantly here as well, the user panel process. So it was quite a detailed and specific process. The way it was set up was well managed, and it was informed by guidelines and that sort of thing that were developed specifically for the process. So I know of a number of examples where similar sort of stakeholder engagements with people that live and work in regions, or in relevant areas for other operations are going to set up something similar.

    Mitch Bouma:

    So that's a good example of something we've started and that's going to go on to something else. But then, I guess around the specific topic that we're working on in terms of assessment using the causal networks. So the Australian Government under the job maker, Strategic Gas Basin plan work has another small program, not as big as GBA, but there's another program called the Trusted Environmental and Geological Information Program. And that program has a similar sort of aim of providing baseline information and data in a single place. And it looks to leverage both existing relationships with stakeholders, wherever possible. Particularly in the regions where they overlap or with our state and territory colleagues in government, for example, but also, the methodologies that have come from the Geological and Bioregional Assessment Program, wherever possible. We'll be looking to take those and move forward with them to provide that level of trusted science that underpins regulatory decision making.

    Andrew Bell:

    We've been joined by Cameron Huddlestone-Holmes, who was with us a bit earlier on with a pre-recorded presentation about the Beetaloo Sub-basin. Cameron, what's your take out from where do we go from here?

    Cameron Huddlestone-Holmes:

    Yeah, I think the work around gas and gas development and its potential impacts is an ongoing area of interest for CSIRO and Geoscience Australia. And obviously, there are a range of programs underway or about to commence to look at these sort of things further. So, the work that's been done in the Beetaloo and the Cooper basins and the Isa basin for that matter, all form a really good platform for continuing that research. The GBA Explorer and the causal network method itself is very amenable to being extended and adding in more information as we go and even replicating it into other regions. So through those other research mechanisms that we have at the moment, this really does form a very good basis and the thing that really drives a lot of the research that we do and saw around this area is addressing the community concern. That's the best way for us to have impact, is to address those sorts of concerns for doing research in a way that matters to the people who are in those regions and have those concerns.

    Andrew Bell:

    From your side of the ledger, Cameron, how do you see that the user panels, how do they help to inform how the work develops and the information that you can get from those user panels or the differing points of views to sort of contextualise what you're doing and where you're doing it.

    Cameron Huddlestone-Holmes:

    I think it's very much a tendency for the researcher to focus on what their area of expertise is. And often that we pursue research and ideas that are driven by what we think are the issues. However, that's not necessarily the issues that matter to those people in those regions. And if we don't have a mechanism for actually finding out what the perspective is of those people who live in regions who might be impacted and the broader community in general, then our research, I mean, what are we doing it for, really? It's to actually make a difference, it's to actually have an impact and address those sorts of issues and concerns. And so I think without that sort of community engagement, our research becomes much less meaningful. So user engagement, end user engagement, whether it's people living in the communities, regulators in the different jurisdictions that regulate the activities, or even the industry itself, that user perspective is absolutely critical.

    Andrew Bell:

    And if I can come back to you, Justine, I mean, you'll work with the user panels. Are people sometimes a little bit surprised that they are being included in the process? It's been baked into the cake that other people a long way away from here are making the decisions and are they somewhat taken aback when actually they sat down and said, "Tell us what you think, tell us what you feel."?

    Justine Lacey:

    I definitely think they were pleasantly surprised. And if I can paraphrase something that Mitch said, and it's totally okay to share this, Mitch, I'm pretty sure. They almost see a lot more process than ordinarily some stakeholders would see into a government process. So there's a level of access that the user panellists get to how the whole GBA unfolds and what's happening along the way, which is something lots of people don't get access to. And I definitely think one of the other things that we heard was there are a lot of stakeholders in those panels that do get a lot of access to each other all the time. And you can say government and industry probably have pretty ready access to each other. But as we started to kind of broaden out and bring different community perspectives in there, all of a sudden, you're getting a really different mix of people talking around an issue at the same time.

    Justine Lacey:

    And so the level of access that some of the more community based representation brought to it, they were really pleased to say, "Oh, I feel like I'm hearing industry being just really open about what their plans are, but I don't know that I would be in an environment where I could have that sort of access ordinarily." And so they're kind of the little bits that we are not necessarily thinking are designed in, but which people appreciate at the time that they're getting... The fact that people could just talk to scientists about exactly what they were doing, unpick all of their assumptions and some people really did want to interrogate. They actually said, "I can go away from this process and recommend this science into some other kind of ministerial processes that are going on." Because I feel confident that it's being done right. People are doing the best work. Some people need that and some people don't, but you could see it made a difference.

    Andrew Bell:

    Being done right. What a great phrase that is. And I don't know if you can, in a quantitative way respond to this idea, the ripple effect of people being heard spreading outwardly from some remote communities to other remote communities. Is that another legacy? Is that another consequence of this kind of conversation, just on the trust issue of science alone?

    Justine Lacey:

    Potentially. So something that we had hoped in the beginning was that people who sat around the panel table would potentially communicate outwards into their own constituencies or communities. That didn't probably happen as much as we'd hoped, but that also, we discovered that it requires quite a different sort of resourcing. So in terms of thinking through what do you want, I mean, some people did pass on the science, or they'd take a map and say, "I can use this in my community, because this all makes sense. We can point to different things." So in terms of small scale uptake, we definitely saw it. But if you wanted it on a larger scale, we would think about that differently. And so that was a lesson that we could get out of this. We definitely had people bringing a lot to the table, but then you have to think about, well, what are you expecting people to do? If they come and stay in this process for four years, outwardly as well as part of their role.

    Andrew Bell:

    And during that four years, of course, COVID came along, from your point of view, from your work, how did it affect your work?

    Justine Lacey:

    Well, definitely. So I would be at many of the panel meetings and observing interaction. And that was quite telling, but how I collected data was I would interview the panellists. So they knew who I was generally, because they'd seen me before, but about a year apart or after a certain amount of activity, it happened in a panel, I would just talk to the panellists and ask them about how things were going. From the first set, we got a little bit of a feedback loop. Could we change anything? And that was always part of the design. Can you actually say, is something working or not working? Can we adjust it? And that was done a few times and building that feedback loop was also part of building trust.

    Justine Lacey:

    I think people did feel like their talent was valued. The department could hear something and they would change the structure of meetings to kind of be more accommodating of what people were seeking from them. And making the science accessible was just a great lesson for scientists. We started to communicate really, really complex science in a much different way, because you had quite a broad audience in the room and not everybody... There was lots of hydrologists and geologists, but not everybody brought that science background. And so that's a real test of making something useful and accessible to a wide range of people across Australia.

    Andrew Bell:

    And for most of the day, we've been talking about science. We ended up talking about people, which we are ultimately the important part of this equation, as well as making sure we look after the land and all the rest of it. As we draw to a close, I wouldn't mind going round the table one last time just to draw out any final observations. If I can stay with you, Justine, from the social science point of view, from your experience on the Geological and Bioregional Assessments Program, what do you take to where you're working now and how you think how this kind of conversation can evolve? What's the legacy on you, in your work, personally?

    Justine Lacey:

    Okay. So this is a good lesson that I should have probably known well before I got to GBA, but we always dream that there's one perfect stakeholder engagement process. And if we dream it up and then we just roll it out across the landscape, identical, just in a cookie cutter way, we'll get that same result. This did work, but each of those panels becomes quite different. They bring different priorities, they've got different people in the process. And so as much as the overarching process is the same, they have panel meetings, they're talking about the science, there is a contextualization of it. And building a process that allows for that is probably one of the most important things. And I can say I'm taking parts of this process off into another big agenda around the reef. And I'm actually really sort of excited by what this engagement unlocked for the potential of what citizens expect. Not every Australian citizen wants to be in a process like this, but if we feel like enough people have represented different views into a process, we tend to have broader confidence in those processes.

    Andrew Bell:

    You said talks about unlocking there. And of course, this is work about unlocking resources for the gas market. It's remarkable. Once you start on a process, what you end up doing. Thanks for that, Justine. If I can go to you, Kate, as we draw to a conclusion, you look back at four years and you look forward to whatever comes next. What are your final thoughts at the end of this roadshow?

    Kate Holland:

    So I spoke before about the science-y kind of things in terms of the method that we developed and just the data we collected through the investigations, huge opportunity and privilege to be able to be funded, to be able to do that. I think, Justine, you touched on our communication challenges and that was our lessons from death by PowerPoint that I spoke about earlier. But also, one of the final things that we did was 29 fact sheets to communicate the investigations that we did to a general audience. And look, not an easy task for scientists to communicate two years worth of work in a two page fact sheet with a couple of pictures or diagrams. Really challenging for us to bring that down. So well done to the team for doing that. And I think we've delivered something that hopefully our audience can read and understand and gives them an entry to go and look deeper into the datasets and other reports that we've written.

    Andrew Bell:

    Thanks, Kate. And to you finally there, Mitch. Four years, how does the Mitch of today feel from the Mitch of way back when? What have you learned? What would you do again? What might you might not do again? And where does this work go next?

    Mitch Bouma:

    I think maybe one of the most important things I should say is that this program is four years. It actually goes back further than that 10 years with the predecessor Bioregional Assessment Program. So there's a lot of people who've been involved, not just me. I mean, I've sat in this sort of position for the last couple of, well, just over a year, I suppose, but there's been a lot of other people who've been involved who've done a huge amount of work to bring us to where we are today. So those people also need to be congratulated on their involvement. And I mean, people will know who they are, I suppose if they're listening.

    Mitch Bouma:

    But in terms of the program, I think one of the great things that I've noticed is that the program, it's a big program. It's a big program run by big government agencies, but we've actually identified a way to deliver government programs in a way that's agile, as agile as you can be in a big program, and working with such a huge array of people to try and get as many different perspectives into that work.

    Mitch Bouma:

    And we found that you get really good bits from all of the different people involved. So if you didn't involve all of the local community, all of the state governments and everything, you're going to miss out on stuff. So I think that has been a real great part of the program. I think that the outcomes of deliverables, one of the great things we've done is developed or adjusted the way that we deliver work. So one of the things we've quite clearly heard is that massive reports while they're really good, they're just a little bit hard for all audiences to digest. So we try to adapt and deliver smaller reports with bits and pieces that could be pulled out that were of key relevance to people in different areas. So that's also been really good. The tool, obviously, the GBA Explorer tool, it's groundbreaking in the way it's been developed.

    Mitch Bouma:

    It allows people to focus on what they're interested in, focusing in on particular assets and seeing exactly how those assets can be affected by a potential industry. So I think that's really fantastic. I also think that there's great scope for building on that work, both the actual tools and products we've developed, but the methodologies that underpin them. So there's just so much great work, so many great people involved. And I really, just from the bottom of my heart, want to thank everybody who's been involved from the local communities to all of the hundreds of scientists, the great people who've supported me in my team in DAWE and also, everyone in the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, Geoscience Australia. So all in all, it's just been a fantastic experience on my behalf.

    Andrew Bell:

    Thanks, Mitch. And Cameron, a word from you. What's your final thoughts about the journey and what the legacy of that journey might be?

    Cameron Huddlestone-Holmes:

    Yeah, I think we had Jane and Andrew talking about collaboration before between two agencies. I think something that people from outside of CSIRO may not be entirely aware of is that we're a large organisation with about 5,000 employees and with different internal structures and things like that. So there was a large amount of internal collaboration in CSIRO with different disciplines and then mixing that across to our colleagues in Geoscience Australia and the Bureau of Meteorology. So the collaboration is not just between agencies, but it's between geologists and engineers and ecologists and groundwater specialists, all of those sorts of people, as well as Justine and the social sciences. So that multidisciplinary thing, which is only possible in a really large project like this, is really exciting and interesting.

    Cameron Huddlestone-Holmes:

    For me, as a geologist, I got to learn a lot about things like ecology and birds and little critters that run around and those sorts of things. So that level of preparation is what I found really exciting. And the interactive GBA Explorer is a fantastic way of being able to bring all those different disciplines together into a cohesive way of reporting and demonstrating that. And it's a hugely powerful thing to do, that level of collaboration.

    Andrew Bell:

    Thanks, Cameron. Thanks, Mitch. Thanks, Kate. Thanks, Justine. And thanks to all the others who've contributed to today's roadshow. A reminder, you can see the presentations on the website, they'll be there in a little while. And that GBA Explorer, exciting development. Thanks are due to the teams at the various agencies and the department for helping create not only this project, but also this roadshow. And also those teams behind the scenes who helped get us to where we are now to the conclusion of today's events. Many thanks to the team in the studio, and also the support team dotted about the place as we are dealing with a virtual world.

    Andrew Bell:

    The Geological and Bioregional Assessments roadshow lives on online. Go visit, get those fact sheets, look at that GBA Explorer and the two words, perhaps that stick in my mind at the end of these six hours of conversations and talk of collaborations are those two C words. This seems to be a project that has flourished with collaboration and conversation. Keep those two things going. Thanks for being with us. Until the next time. Goodbye.

 

Last updated:
15 November 2021