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AUGUST, 2013
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Lock out exploration Gippsland farms still under threat amid coal seam gas controversy By DAVID PALMER BASS Coast Council, based in Wonthaggi, believes coal seam gas exploration in Gippsland has the potential to threaten the region’s aim of doubling its food production by 2030. That aim is the vision of the draft Gippsland regional growth plan. Last month the council wrote to Victorian Premier Dennis Napthine to express community and council concerns that prime farm land in Gippsland was still not permanently protected from coal seam and unconventional gas extraction and mining. A temporary moratorium on further exploration is in place. Bass Coast chief executive ofďŹ cer, Allan Bawden, said in his letter the council was opposed to those operations and considered “the current legislative framework does not provide enough rigour to protect our environmentâ€?. “Council is particularly concerned about the impact this type of exploration and mining could have on our valuable agricultural industry and environmental biodiversity,â€? he said. Last month marked the ďŹ rst anniversary of the establishment of the rapidly expanding Lock The Gate Gippsland campaign in Victoria. Queensland based Lock The Gate Alliance president, Drew Hutton, spawned its establishment, at a well-attended landholder meeting in Leongatha in July 2012. “Only when every gate is locked will we have a chance to successfully
GOLDEN CHALLENGES SHAUN Witchell is enjoying some challenges more than others while running the Golden Apple orchard at Labertouche. The Witchells have big plans for their operations, despite some setbacks. Shaun is pictured at part of the 2.5ha planting of Jazz apples. The espalier layout is called a 2D trellis.
pursue legal and political goals,â€? he told the meeting. He said in NSW, some 10,000 landholders had agreed to lock the gate “and in some areas, regardless of legal issues or government policy, the CSG companies have been locked outâ€?. NSW FarmersAssociation members, at their annual conference in Sydney last month, called on the association “to lobby for the government’s granting of mining and CSG licenses, to be subject to achieving a triple bottom line beneďŹ tâ€?. Matthew Wright, director of climate solutions think tank Zero Emissions, said last month that Queensland and NSW “are each seeing the prospect of 40,000 CSG wells, across mining leases so big and vast, they’re bigger than the entire state of Victoriaâ€?. Mr Wright welcomed Bass Coast Shire’s response to the Premier, but said both federal and state governments need to announce an indeďŹ nite moratorium or permanent ban on all CSG mining on land. He said the oil industry peak body, the Australian Petroleum Production ExplorationAssociation, had been going around easternVictoria “spending up big on advertising and lobbyists running a charm offensive using propaganda such as ‘natural’ to describe coal seam gasâ€?. “But there’s nothing natural about letting the genie out of the bottle by taking a gas that has been safely stored for millions of years,â€? he said. “Letting it out in such an uncontrolled fashion is dangerous to human health, the landscape and the environment.â€?
„ See full feature story on pages 6-7.
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