'NOT CSG FREE' - NSW Labor Opposition Leader John Robertson cravenly betrays the Clarence Valley

At the NSW Labor State Conference in July 2014 the following urgency motion was passed by the political wing of the party:

That Conference:

1. Notes:
a) on the NSW North Coast there is overwhelming community opposition to Coal Seam Gas and Unconventional Gas mining and mining operations;
b) the community's concern relates to the harmful effects of CSG mining on water quality, farm lands, the environment, communities, residents' health and tourism;
c) the CSG industry has no social license to operate on the NSW North Coast;
d) the NSW North Coast has unique environmental qualities; and
e) CSG mining is incompatible with the NSW North Coast's important employment sectors including tourism and agriculture;

2. Condemns the NSW Liberal/National Party Government's pro-CSG fracking, drilling and expansion agenda on the NSW North Coast; and

3. Calls on the NSW Labor Party to:
a) support an immediate moratorium on all CSG activities and licences within the boundaries of the State Parliamentary seats of Lismore, Ballina, Clarence, and Tweed on the NSW North Coast; and
b) support a declaration that the State Parliamentary seats of Lismore, Ballina, Clarence and Tweed be 'CSG Free' and therefore be off limits to the Coal Seam Gas and Unconventional Gas industries. [Janelle Saffin & Justine Elliot Federal Labor MP for Richmond]

On 30 September 2014 the parliamentary wing of the NSW Labor Party announced that it had incorporated a ‘CSG Free’ Northern Rivers into the policies it is taking to the March 2015 state election.

Robertson, Spooner, Smith and Goodman Media Release 29 September 2014:

The Northern Rivers region is unique.

It is one of Australia’s most biologically diverse areas supporting a variety of significant habitats. Many parts of the Northern Rivers have been given World Heritage recognition, and the region is also home to key industries like tourism, manufacturing and agriculture which support thousands of local jobs.

It is the job of a responsible government to protect the Northern Rivers from activities which threaten the region’s precious environment, local industry, businesses and agricultural land.

Good economic development must support and enhance our environment – and Labor will ensure the risks associated with the expansion of CSG and unconventional gas will not threaten the Northern Rivers.

Yours sincerely

John Robertson

Unfortunately NSW Labor Opposition Leader John Robertson has decided that the Clarence Valley, its vital water catchment, tourism, sugar cane, commercial ocean/estuary fishing, forestry and cattle do not form part of the Northern Rivers and he has excised this region from his pledge to voters:

                                                                                                                         

Labor is committed to ensuring we do not compromise the quality of drinking water supplies by allowing CSG and unconventional gas exploration within the core catchment areas.

Labor will declare a total ban of CSG and unconventional gas in the Northern Rivers of NSW, encompassing the local government areas of Ballina Shire, Byron Shire, Kyogle Shire, Lismore City, Tweed Shire, and Richmond Valley. This region is pristine and stunning with World Heritage listed national parks and recreational areas.

It has a unique quality of life with a blend of lifestyles ranging from alternative to agriculture. It has a mild, sub-tropical climate with a significant elderly and retirement population. The region also has the nation’s most significant internal migration in Australia.

The industries of tourism, cattle, sugar and dairy all rely on the area’s natural values.

The environmental values of the region are internationally significant. The development of the CSG and unconventional gas industry would fundamentally undermine these environmental assets and the economic drivers that rely on them and should not be allowed. [my red bolding]

When I telephoned his Sydney office I was told “at least you have the moratorium”. As if this lesser pledge, to only allow the Clarence Valley to be turned into unconventional gas fields after Labor has ‘explored’ the issue, was a given and not the open-ended election promise that it is:

Moratorium on all Coal Seam Gas:

* Labor will implement an immediate moratorium on Coal Seam Gas across the state. We will suspend all coal seam gas exploration licenses and stop any new extraction licenses being issued.

* Coal seam gas drilling poses clear and present risks to the integrity of our State’s drinking water. It has the potential to damage aquifers, interfere with fragile marine life and compromise our food basin.

Ban CSG from around core drinking water catchments:

* Labor will ban CSG from around core drinking water catchments. This recognises that there are certain no-go zones where coal seam gas extraction should never be allowed.

* In 2013 Labor introduced legislation to ban CSG from drinking water catchments in Sydney and the Illawarra. Labor is committed to exploring similar protections in catchments right across NSW. [Office of the Leader of the Opposition 30 September 2014]

Any Labor candidate standing in the seat of Clarence in 2015 need not bother knocking on my door – he or she has lost my vote from this day forward.

Nor will the Federal Member for Richmond Justine Elliot be receiving any favourable words from me in future, given the part she and the former Federal MP for Page Janelle Saffin played in abandoning the Clarence Valley to an uncertain future at the hands of a rapacious unconventional gas industry, as well as their misleading social and mainstream media statements.

As for Messrs. Spooner, Smith and Goodman standing as Labor candidates in the aforementioned favoured electorates. They were well aware of what they were condoning when they put their names to this betrayal of the southern-most parts of the Northern Rivers. They can expect that I will not be offering them any support either and will be loudly reminding people of their political perfidy during the 2015 state election campaign.

UPDATE

On 29 October 2014 NSW Labor announced that it had decided to include the Clarence Valley in its policy permanently banning coal seam gas/tight gas/unconventional gas exploration, mining and production in the Northern Rivers region.

U.S. Slate Magazine - The Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific: How Australia became the dirtiest polluter in the developed world

Excerpt from Slate online magazine’s article The Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific:  How Australia became the dirtiest polluter in the developed world:

Australians like to think of themselves as green. Their island country boasts some 3 million square miles of breathtaking landscape. They were an early global leader in solar power. They’ve had environmental regulations on the books since colonial times. And in 2007 they elected a party and a prime minister running on a “pro-climate” platform, with promises to sign the Kyoto Protocol and pass sweeping environmental reforms. All of which makes sense for a country that is already suffering the early effects of global warming.

And yet, seven years later, Australia has thrown its environmentalism out the window — and into the landfill.

The climate-conscious Labor Party is out, felled by infighting and a bloodthirsty, Rupert Murdoch–dominated press that sows conspiracy theories about climate science. In its place, Australians elected the conservative Liberal Party, led by a prime minister who once declared that “the climate argument is absolute crap.”

In the year since they took office, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Liberal-led coalition have already dismantled the country’s key environmental policies. Now they’ve begun systematically ransacking its natural resources. In the process, they’ve transformed Australia from an international innovator on environmental issues into quite possibly the dirtiest country in the developed world. And in a masterful whirl of the spin machine, they’ve managed to upend public debate by painting climate science as superstition and superstition as climate science. (We should note here that one of us grew up in Australia.)

The country’s landmark carbon tax has been repealed. The position of science minister has been eliminated. A man who warns of “global cooling” is now the country’s top business adviser. In November, Australia will host the G-20 economic summit; it plans to use its power as host to keep climate change off the official agenda.

If the environment has become Australia’s enemy, fossil fuels are its best friend once again. Two months after it struck down the carbon tax, the government forged a deal with a fringe party led by a mining tycoon to repeal a tax on mining profits. It appointed a noted climate-change skeptic — yes, another one — to review its renewable energy targets. Surprise: He’s expected to slash them. Independent modeling in a study commissioned by the Climate Institute, Australian Conservation Foundation, and WWF-Australia finds that the cuts to renewable energy won’t reduce Australians’ energy bills. They will, however, gift the country’s coal and gas industry another $8.8 billion U.S.

At a time when solar power is booming worldwide, sunny Australia is rolling back its state-level subsidies (despite domestic success) and canceling major solar projects. Meanwhile, the government has given the go-ahead to build the nation’s largest coal mine, with an eye toward boosting coal exports to India.   

Did we mention that Australians’ per-capita carbon emissions are the highest of any major developed country in the world? Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific. No, Australia isn’t a theocracy, and oil isn’t the source of its fossil-fuel riches. But it is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal and third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and minerals and fuels account for nearly 50 percent of its export revenues. Its per-capita carbon emissions actually exceed those of Saudi Arabia. And its behavior of late is beginning to bear an ugly resemblance to those petro-states whose governments seem to exist chiefly to guarantee the spectacular profits of the fossil-fuel industry…….

Read the full article here.

Excerpt from Pulitzer Prize-winning Inside Climate News article Canada-Australia 'Axis of Carbon' an Obstacle to Climate Pact:

Their prime ministers mince no words in their disdain for putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions to protect their fossil fuel exports….. Official data shows that neither Canada nor Australia can claim to be on track toward meeting their existing greenhouse gas emissions goals, modest as they are….. John Gummer, chairman of the UK Committee on Climate Change, was even more direct as he bashed Canada, and especially Australia, in an interview this summer with Australian television.

“Only Australia and to some extent Canada, but particularly Australia, is actually going backwards,” he said. “Australia now has miserable targets….. way out of line of any other advanced country and that's a very sad thing…. Australia has also been lambasted for attempting to keep climate change off the agenda when the G20 nations meet in Brisbane in November. It’s a tactic that Harper pioneered a few years ago when the G20 met in Toronto, to the considerable irritation of diplomats including Ban Ki-moon.

“Australia has been widely criticised for dropping climate change from the agenda on the basis that it is not an economic issue,” the Centre for Economic Development Australia said in an August report. “Climate change is a G20 litmus test as well as a test of Australia’s role. It is a problem with a global consequence requiring collective action.”…..

Read the full article here.

It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. So if readers are still in any doubt as to how the world now views Australia under an Abbott Government, this was the cold reception Foreign Minister Julie Bishop received at the U.N. Climate Summit on 23 September 2014:

"I'm disappointed but not surprised with Australia," Pa Ousman Jarju, Gambia's Climate Change Minister, who represents the 54 least developed nations at UN climate talks, told the Responding to Climate Change analysis website later. "What the Foreign Minister said was as good as not coming. It's nothing … as good as not attending."

There appears to be at least one realist amongst Metgasco Limited's shareholders

This was on the Hot Copper MEL forum last week:

Aunty gets taken for a ride by Queensland Premier

On 5 December 2013 the Australian mainstream media reported that Qld Premier Campbell Newman had appointed Retired Brigadier William Julian Andrew "Bill" Mellor to control the state government's anti-bikie strategy.

ABC News was one of the media outlets which ran with the story that had apparently come to light after transcripts of Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee (PCMC) hearings were tabled in Parliament in November 2013.

The ABC’s initial reporting revealed the house number and suburb in which Mellor lived. Campbell Newman complained to Prime Minister Abbott about what he called a security breach and, insisted that the Australian Broadcasting Commission should pay for a security upgrade to the Mellor residence.

An upgrade Bill Mellor’s own security consultancy firm has since supplied for an undisclosed sum.

While ABC Managing Director Mark Scott would be Internet savvy enough to realise that it would take a burly bikie with a laptop just minutes to track down Bill Mellor’s home address from information already listed on Google’s search engine before December 2013; Messrs Abbott and Newman either did not know or did not care that Mellor’s full residential address and current telephone number for his home-based business had been placed on a website with which he was connected by the man himself.

While a number of other easily accessible websites*, along with an online newsletter, all list the suburb where Bill Mellor lives. The Sensis online telephone book also gives his current residential 'phone number & address and, Google Images has a link to that webpage with his full residential details.

Campbell Newman also obviously did not remember that in a February 2013 media release he identified Bill Mellor as being connected with the association which owns the main website in question.

So Premier Newman himself would have led any interested bikie straight to Brigadier Mellor (he certainly led me) and Google Earth would have done the rest by supplying an image of the basic layout of the Mellor home and the streets leading into the little 14-house cul-de-sac in which Mellor lives.

However, it seems that no bikies were interested in where Bill Mellor lives, as according to The Courier Mail on 28 September 2014 It is understood that no threats or incidents have materialised.

Perhaps Campbell Newman can complain about another aspect of the ABC’s coverage and get Mr. Mellor enough money to inject some life and colour into his rather tired front garden.

* Even the then Governor-General unwittingly became part of the information overload by publishing Bill Mellor's full residential address at the time he received his Member of the Order of Australia - which was but four mouse clicks away from revealing the amount of money he paid for this house and years later received from its sale, as well as the price paid for his present residence.