“The state governments have a massive vested financial interest in these projects going ahead. They don’t get any revenue or very little revenue from prime agricultural land, but they get hundreds of millions of dollars from these coalmines and coal seam gas,” Mr Turnbull said in a radio interview.
Jeremy Buckingham said that no decisions on the future of the CSG industry should be made until independent research about emissions from Australian coal seam gas operations had been published and peer-reviewed.
”It is disturbing that the government is relying on this secret industry data,” he said. ”The Worley Parsons report must be made public so that the assumptions and the science can be tested.
”The whole impression this submission gives is that the government has already made up its mind about this industry before the inquiry is finished.”
COAL seam gas was once regarded as a major hazard to coal miners because of the risk of explosion. Today it’s become a major hazard to graziers and farmers as the rush by mining companies encroaches upon the very land they are trying to make a living out of.
Governments throughout Australia are set to make billions of dollars in royalties from the rush and appear to be turning a blind eye to the possibility of major ecological damage caused by the fracking process used to extract the gas. The process reportedly is already banned in China.
THE scope of the coalmine and associated infrastructure project envisaged by Indian company GVK Power is a whole lot bigger than was proposed by Hancock Coal, but not all the benefits are going to flow to Australia.
Now rehabilitation sounds great in theory, but farmers here say cropping is a precision science, as demonstrated by this re-levelling of cotton fields damaged in the last wet season.
BEN SULLIVAN: “I don’t see how you can take something out from lower down, that it’s not going to subside on the top and that’s going to change the way water flows and it’s going to make it near impossible to grow crops. And we’ve asked to take us somewhere and prove to us so we can feel safe in ourselves and our kids’ future to show us where this has been done, but I’m still waiting.”
Dr Somerville provided a “compelling and thought-provoking testimony foreshadowing the personal and social traumas that the arrival of the coal seam gas industry is likely to bring,” parliamentary committee deputy chair and Greens MLC Jeremy Buckingham told New Matilda.
In his written submission to the committee Somerville said: “I am very alarmed at the social disruption, depression, anger, violence, and political chaos that the CSG industry appears set to inflict on Australia.
Farmers are not against coal seam gas exploration but need it to be environmentally sustainable, says Lock the Gate president Drew Hutton.
THE discovery of the Great Artesian Basin in 1848, paved the way for the opening up of the outback and the development of the nation’s sheep and cattle industries. Vast tracts of arid land in Queensland, and parts of northern NSW and South Australia, finally had access to a reliable water supply. That groundwater remains […]
A wonderful and informative program from Alan Jones about the “agricultural vandalism” that politicians are engaging in – and the price they will pay at the next election. He said that the governments’ “endless pursuit of mining money” must end – they must realise that we can’t eat coal!!
Farmers will become more violent, depressed and even suicide as they face the biggest threat ever to their mental health unless there’s a change to current mining policies.
Alan Jones interviews Dr Richard Denniss