Antinuclear

Full-page advertisements by mining companies do nothing to persuade ordinary Australians that drilling for coal seam gas is completely safe. HAVE YOU COME ACROSS the full-page newspaper ads that Santos has taken out this week? They’re in response to the Four Corners expose of the dangers of the coal seam gas industry – that same program which Santos refused to speak to.

The advertising spree by the coal seam gas company is a desperate and obvious attempt to try and buy a social licence, which the community has so far refused because of the risks this industry poses to our water, farmland and climate.

But even with its massive advertising budget, Santos can’t get past the weight of serious public and scientific concern about this high-risk industry.

Three quarters of New South Wales voters oppose CSG exploration on agricultural land, as shown in a Fairfax surveythis week. As a Queensland senator and the Greens coal seam gas spokesperson, I constantly hear that same opposition loud and clear in my home state. And I hear it from our expert scientific bodies, who say we don’t understand the long term impacts of coal seam gas on our water resources, and could be doing damage to the water table which will take hundreds of years to fix, if it’s fixable at all.

Australians aren’t buying the big-mining spin because the facts are simply not on the industry’s side. Here are a few facts that were conveniently left out of Santos’ ad.

The ad states that the environmental approval process for Santos’ GLNG project in Queensland took more than three years, “rather than being rushed, as claimed by Four Corners”.

Santos should know better than anyone how long it took to provide its environmental impact statement to the state government.

But that’s not what Four Corners found was rushed; it was the Queensland Government’s decision-making process that was rushed. Santos may well have taken three years to provide its information to the state government, but state government environmental specialists were not given enough time to assess the company’s claims.

The program quoted one public servant, who said, “We were given less than four weeks to deal with 10,000 pages of documents”.

The ad then goes on to say that the company’s environmental impact statement included groundwater assessment.

But the problem that the Four Corners program pointed out was that the government did not do any groundwater assessment.

So while the company may have assessed groundwater, there was no assessment by government to verify the company’s claims.

Santos says it is continuing to monitor groundwater and publishing its findings online.

It can do all the monitoring it likes but without baseline data, which Four Corners pointed out the Queensland Government did not have before approving the project, we don’t know what groundwater levels were in the areas before they become huge gas fields. It’s like a before and after shot without the before shot – you can’t tell what’s changed.

And without baseline data it’s very hard for farmers and the community alike to hold big industry to account should things go horribly wrong.

Despite lacking baseline data, or doing any groundwater assessment of its own, the Queensland Government hurriedly ticked off on Santos’ project and the Federal Government soon followed suit.

Santos includes the fact that both levels of government approved its project in the advertisement, pointing to the real dilemma here.

The old parties at both levels of government are so wedded to the mining industry that they are approving coal seam gas projects as quickly as possible with gaping holes of data left missing.

No state or federal government has ever knocked back a coal seam gas project.

All the old parties are ignoring the scientific warnings and the thousands of Australians who have banded together through the Lock the Gate Alliance to voice their concerns for our valuable farmland, precious water and the regional towns that rely on these resources.

While they may not have the advertising dollars that the mining magnates do, these ordinary Australians are witnessing firsthand the impacts of coal seam gas and letting the rest of us know about it, as best they can.

They’re telling their stories online, through social media, at community meetings and by joining together in protest.

And the people power is starting to work.

After repeated calls from the community, the Greens and country independents, the Federal Government has finally decided to start looking at the impacts of coal seam gas mining and large coal mines on water resources.

But sadly it’s come far too late. Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke has already approved several huge coal seam gas projects in Queensland, as well as a major CSG project in northern NSW.

In an age of food insecurity, it’s incredibly short-sighted to be rushing through coal seam gas projects at the expense of farmers and regional communities.

What we need is a moratorium on coal seam gas mining until we fully understand its impacts on groundwater, the climate and food production. All indications are that those impacts will be unmanageable, and when we have clean energy alternatives that don’t threaten food production, it’s a no brainer.