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Coal seam gas flares up as burning election issue in NSW north-west

They came from everywhere. Indigenous people from Walgett, Moree and as far away as Brisbane, farmers from all over New South Wales’s north-west, people from places called Red Bobs, Cattle Creek and Colly Blue, activists and those who never thought they’d be activists.

They gathered in a setting almost stereotypically Australian: sitting on hay bales, under the gumtrees, by the side of a river. About 700 people had come to Gunnedah to celebrate, but there was a political message here, too.

Less than two weeks before the NSW election, they were here for a “people’s declaration” that 87 communities in the north-west had declared themselves “gasfield free” since 2013. Together, the communities covered around three million hectares – around a third of the vast area from Tamworth up to Gunnedah and the Queensland border and west to Walgett – and they were adamant that they do not want coal seam gas (CSG) in their area.

Campaigners’ tactics of using community surveys have proved potent. The organisers, the Lock the Gate grassroots group, said the average result in all the communities was 96% against CSG, a issue key at this election throughout the north-west, as well as in the northern rivers region around Ballina and Lismore. The National party was holding its campaign launch in Dubbo on Sunday, and acknowledges it is under pressure on this issue.

The north-west’s Lock the Gate coordinator, grazier and once stalwart national supporter Megan Kuhn, admitted the surveys had no legal force. “But they’re a powerful political statement,” she said. “It’s a social and moral power that’s been unleashed. Surveying the community is something that both industry and government completely avoided because they didn’t want to know what we we felt.”
The group sent questions to candidates in all five north-west seats held by the Nationals – Tamworth, Barwon, Upper Hunter, Dubbo and Northern Tablelands – to ask if they would support stopping CSG until the state’s chief scientist’s recommendations to tighten oversight were fully implemented.

They were also asked if they would prohibit Santos’ controversial Narrabri gas project planned for the Pilliga forest near Narrabri, the largest CSG proposal in the state. It has been approved by the NSW government but is yet to be signed off in Canberra. The Coalition and Labor did not respond to the questionnaire, organisers said. The Greens and the Christian Democrats, agreed, as did all independent candidates.

At least 10 independent and Green candidates turned up to the Gunnedah event, keen to display their anti-CSG credentials. Peter Draper, a former Independent MP defeated by the National’s Kevin Anderson in 2011, is standing again in Tamworth on an anti-CSG platform, as well as opposition to the giant Shenhua Watermark open-cut coalmine in the rich farmlands of Liverpool Plains.
Anderson holds the seat by 6.8% and has said “prime agricultural land on the Liverpool Plains is not the place” for CSG, but he has not specifically opposed the coalmine.

Draper said the message “pretty clearly is that the community has had enough ... They don’t believe the state government when they give us reassurances. They don’t trust the coalminers. They don’t trust CSG companies. We don’t trust any of them around here.
“There are plenty of good coalmines around here that contribute a lot to the community but to contemplate putting one in the Liverpool Plains is absolute lunacy and CSG is just so dangerous we shouldn’t even contemplate it.”

Coal seam gas is a form of unconventional gas found in coal seams beneath the earth and is extracted by digging wells to pump out water to release the gas. Most controversial is when “fracking” is used for extraction, which involves pumping fluids and chemicals into a well to fracture the coal seam to release the gas.

The risk of CSG includes the contamination of water tables, particularly in prime agricultural areas, although supporters say it is a risk that can be managed with strong regulations. Santos says its has no plans to frack in Narrabri.

The government says it is cleaning up the CSG mess it inherited from Labor, which gave out licences “like confetti” when in power. But it maintains CSG carefully managed is necessary for the state’s energy future. It is buying back a string of licences and is delaying decisions on new projects until after the election, although the tighter rules would not apply to the Narrabri project.

Labor, which acknowledges it issued the licences in the first place, is promising a statewide moratorium on new CSG licences until the chief scientist’s recommendations are implemented, and will ban it entirely in the sensitive northern rivers and other “no go” zones.

Kuhn told the crowd that the declaration sent a “strong message to the government. Our opposition it not waning, it is growing”. The protests had delayed the Narrabri project, she said, a small victory in a long campaign. “If Santos had their way, they would be here now.” She told Guardian Australia that Labor was not trusted on the issue either.

Andrew Pursehouse, whose farm would be surrounded by the Chinese-owned $1.2bn Shenhua coalmine, told the crowd that if federal environment minister Greg Hunt gives final approval, “I’ll invite you all to participate in the greatest environmental protest Australia has seen probably seen the Franklin Dam”.
He told Guardian Australia he was a former member of the National party and had voted for Anderson at the 2011 state election. Draper had suffered a backlash against federal independent member for the area, Tony Windsor, after he supported the Gillard Labor government. “As a farmer, that was alien to us,” he said. This time, he would vote for Draper.
“The Nationals are asleep at the wheel and not prepared to stand up against their Liberal colleagues to represent their constituents,” he said.

“As a farmer, we’re not against mining, it’s just in the wrong spot. You just don’t put a toilet in the middle of your best farming country.”

The election will be held on 28 March.

source: http://www.theguardian.com