Coal seam gas (CSG) mining can cause cancer and harm unborn babies, according to a group of medical experts giving evidence to a Senate committee.
The six experts, who include a Queensland government epidemiologist, say the state’s ban on the use of cancer-causing chemicals collectively known as BTEX in CSG mining doesn’t protect the community from health risks.
The plight of Jondaryan and its people has become a metaphor for the deliberate destruction of the Darling Downs by state and federal governments and their lapdogs at the Toowoomba Regional Council.
For them, farmers and communities have become inconsequential in the rush for coal and gas royalties and, with a brand of bureaucratic bullying borrowed from the Soviets, farmers have seen their sovereignty stripped while they are driven off their land.
Is widespread anger in the bush over the march of coalmining, the loss of productive farmland, the spread of coal seam gas exploration and its perceived threat to the Great Artesian Basin really a proxy for much deeper political misgivings? If so, who is at fault and who has most to lose?
Fresh food for rural discontent