THE TWEED www.tweedecho.com.au Volume 3 #36 Thursday, May 19, 2011
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Local & independent
Thousands march against CSG mining Luis Feliu
More than 3,000 people voiced their outrage against coal-seam gas (CSG) mining on Saturday at Murwillumbah in one of the biggest rallies ever seen in the Northern Rivers. The controversial ‘fracking’ method used to extract underground gas by the CSG industry has tapped a raw nerve among the many protesters, including farmers, families, environmentalists, Aboriginal elders, tourism operators, and blue and white collar workers, who have united against what they see as the biggest threat to Australia’s environment. A long colourful stream of protesters waving placards and chanting anti-CSG slogans stopped traffic as they snaked down the town’s CBD from Knox Park, spilling over on to the road from the pavement. On return to the park they were addressed by a range of speakers including farmers and residents from the Northern Rivers and Queensland, where CSG mining has already started and faces huge opposition, including a blockade of the construction of a CSG pipeline through a residential estate at Tara in central Queensland. They heard how almost every council in the region has called for a moratorium on CSG mining, which threatens to contaminate the country’s underground water table and its food producing capacity. They were also told that evidence is growing in the US where it first began that CSG’s use of ‘fracking’ (fracturing rocks using chemical reactions) to extract gas from underground coal seams is a serious threat to aquifers. A range of toxic chemicals, including some known carcinogens, are used in this process to release the gas. Opponents say CSG is the new ‘gold’ for mining and want a total ban on it while other groups and govern-
International environmental activist Benny Zable stood out in the colourful crowd last Saturday as a chilling harbinger of a future under coal-seam gas. Photo Jeff ‘Frackwit’ Dawson
ment agencies want a moratorium till the method is proved safe. The region’s three new state government MPs, the National Party’s Thomas George in Lismore, Don Page in Ballina and Geoff Provest in Tweed, as well as federal Richmond MP Justine Elliot, did not turn up to the rally despite being invited by organisers.
One voice Organisers of the rally, the Northern Rivers Guardians (NRG) and Caldera Environment Centre, say the huge turnout on Saturday sent a strong and clear message to government and mining companies that the community is dead against this industry.
Spokesman Michael McNamara said the wide variety of community and industry groups ‘speaking with one voice’ showed clearly the strong community concern with CSG mining. Greens MLC Jeremy Buckingham told the rally that the first thing he did on entering parliament this year was to introduce a Bill in the Upper House calling for a moratorium on all new gas exploration licences pending an inquiry. Mr Buckingham, the Greens’ mining and resources spokesman, said governments ‘don’t want to know’ about the dangers of CSG to their ‘eternal shame’. He said the industry has ‘really slipped through the cracks’ and not
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been dealt with properly in terms of regulation and legislation. The MLC, who beat Pauline Hanson to the post for the last Upper House seat at the recent state election, said he would ‘fight tooth and nail’ against CSG mining altogether ‘otherwise they will turn our most productive farmland into a “gasland”,’ referrring to the US documentary of the same name which has alerted people around the world to the dangers of CSG mining.
Countries act on CSG Just this week, the French parliament voted to ban hydraulic fracturing or fracking in the shale-coal gas industry while in South Africa last month, the government also an-
nounced a moratorium on fracking. One of the keynote speakers at the rally was Queensland farmer Drew Hutton, the president of the newly-formed national Lock the Gate Alliance which is taking action to stop drilling for CSG in southern Queensland. Mr Hutton said hundreds of farmers in the area where coal companies were actively exploring for CSG had joined the alliance and ‘locked the gate’ on mining company representatives wanting to explore or negotiate for drilling rights. He said some of the ‘most courageous’ of all protesters were the people of the Tara estate where the CSG pipeline is being built under their homes, as some of them had been arrested by police as a result of the blockade. ‘When our leaders fail us as they’ve done in Queensland, and federally, then ordinary people have to become heroes’, Mr Hutton said. ‘Tara will go into Australian history because people there will become heroes as they take up the struggle, because the precautionary principle had been totally misapplied with CSG mining. ‘We’ll apply our own moratorium on this industry till it’s proved safe for the environment.’ Mr Hutton was arrested by police at Tara a few weeks ago after sitting on a bulldozer during the blockade action. ‘They say you have to have a reasonable excuse for trespassing, well I’m saying that saving the planet is a pretty reasonable excuse,’ he said to loud cheers and applause from the big crowd. Mr Hutton said he faced a $50,000 fine ‘but I couldn’t care if it was a 10 cents fine because this is a bad law which leads to the desecration of our whole country, and for that I won’t pay a cent’. continued on page 2