New CSG laws more political spin from Bligh government

An announcement by the Bligh government that it will introduce new laws this week to supposedly harmonise relations between farmers and coal seam gas miners has been met with scepticism by both farmers and environmentalists. The media release from the office of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy Minister, Stephen Robertson, is a turgid mixture of wishful thinking, political spin and outright lies.

According to Friends of the Earth Brisbane, the proposed amendments fail to address key questions that are contributing to community disquiet and threaten the environmental and economic viability of the Surat Basin.

Spokesperson Mr Drew Hutton says: 

This legislation, which will go through the Parliament in the next couple of days, will not stop damaging activities occurring on prime agricultural land, it will not protect underground water and it will not prevent gas wells being erected close to dwellings.

The Bligh government simply wants to have these resources ripped out of the ground and sold off to China and elsewhere leaving a massive mess for future governments to clean up.

Mr Hutton has posed the following questions to the Government, which remain unaddressed by these proposed amendments: 

1. How can the interests of landowners and mining companies be harmonised when the mining companies have almost complete freedom to conduct activities such as tree clearing and extraction of water from aquifers when farmers do not?

2. How can the Minister claim "most of the CSG activities are currently in the exploration phase" and the government will introduce appropriate regulation when these projects get final approval when gas companies have already erected thousands of oil wells, extracted gas and thousands of megalitres of underground water, compressed the gas, put it in pipelies and sold it on the domestic market - all without any environmental impact assessments?

3. How can Minister Robertson claim the laws will introduce world's best practice is being demanded when he even admits (on 60 Minutes) that he doesn't know what impact these activities will have on the state's underground water systems, including the Great Artesian Basin?