It seems that local newspapers have been used as a vehicle to promote lock the Gate propaganda.
The following article was published in the Australian on the 18/08/2012. Written by Imre Salusinszky, it demonstrated the lack of credentials in the dealings of the Lock the Gate movement and it's associated satellite groups. The fact that these people can and have hidden under a broad banner of "environmentalism" while spreading lies, misinformation and sabotage the State's economy is beyond belief.
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"A GUIDE to Metgasco's propaganda" is the title of a document prepared for anti-coal seam gas groups in northern NSW by consulting psychologist Wayne Somerville. The document dissects the claims of Metgasco, a natural gas company with extensive exploration licences around Lismore.
"Metgasco employs propaganda to give the impression that all their operations are safe and beneficial," writes Somerville. "Metgasco's language distorts the truth and stymies analysis and debate."
Somerville's claims appeared to be bolstered last month when the regional branch of Australia's leading anti-CSG group, Lock the Gate, contested the credibility of a sample of water from one of the waste-water ponds in which Metgasco stores the water it extracts from coal seams in the process of releasing natural gas.
While laboratory analysis of the Metgasco sample showed nothing worse than elevated saline levels, which would not prevent the water being used for irrigation, Lock the Gate released analysis of a rival sample activists had covertly obtained from the same pond.
As the press release from Lock the Gate spokeswoman Boudicca Cerese revealed, laboratory analysis showed the second sample contained "high levels of a range of heavy metals toxic to humans and wildlife" and thus confirmed CSG poses "a serious threat to humans".
It was scary stuff - and, it turns out, nonsense.
Graham Lancaster, head of the laboratory at Southern Cross University in Lismore that tested both samples, was horrified when he read the unquestioning reporting of Cerese's claims in the local media. It was true the second sample contained much higher levels of heavy metals than the company sample, but Lancaster pointed out there were 4040mg of sediment in the sample provided by the activists, compared with 30mg in the company sample.
"There are separate guidelines (for heavy metals) in water and sediment," he told The Australian at the time.
"The standard for sediment is 100 to 1000 times higher. You are allowed to have more metals in sediment because it's attached to the sediment.
"You don't drink sediment sludge. Hence, applying drinking water guidelines is not relevant."
Cerese was insouciant when questioned by this newspaper, suggesting the real point was the need for independent testing of samples. But her press release unambiguously portrayed the Lock the Gate sample as demonstrating CSG was a threat to humans.
Seldom has the propaganda cat been belled quite so clangingly. Yet activists have been highly successful in stalling CSG in NSW, where there is exploration but no production. That is why the industry employs 11,864 workers in Queensland and just 249 in NSW. It is why CSG - which the industry claims is 70 per cent cleaner than coal - provides 90 per cent of household gas in Queensland but just 6 per cent in NSW.
But this situation will change, possibly as soon as Monday, when NSW Energy Minister Chris Hartcher and Planning Minister Brad Hazzard take a strategic land use policy to state cabinet that is expected to green-light CSG, with a series of "gateways" that ramp up the level of environmental approval required, depending on competing land uses such as agriculture and horse breeding.
Lock the Gate is not going to accept a "gateway" model for CSG. It wants much, if not all, of NSW to be off-limits.
The group's founder, former Queensland Greens candidate Drew Hutton, insists he is not proposing a blanket ban but refuses to nominate a single area in NSW where CSG extraction would be acceptable.
"This industry believes it can go anywhere, do anything and accept no constraints," Hutton tells Inquirer, adding: "It's got to be in areas that are not closely settled."
The main fear factor with CSG - that it can poison aquifers and hence rural drinking water supplies - has not manifested so far in Queensland, and a recent independent study of the Namoi catchment area in northeastern NSW found that "at current levels of development, extensive regional scale impacts on water resources are unlikely".
Lock the Gate is unconvinced by this, just as it is by industry representatives' claims that CSG wells are small and unobtrusive.
"Every gas well is connected by a pipeline and a service road, and every gas field has compressor stations, processing plants and a holding pond," says Hutton. "The impact is huge: you are industrialising the landscape."
That claim is countered by Rick Wilkinson, from the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association. "For every 100 wells, you need a compressor station," he says. "But it does not have to be over a coalfield; it just has to be connected by a pipeline."
Part of the startling success of Lock the Gate has been the alliance it has forged with farmers' groups concerned about water quality and control of their land. It is an unlikely alliance, given the close and documented relationship between anti-CSG groups and far-left outfits: last year, The Australian revealed the main Wollongong-based anti-CSG group shares a mailing address with Socialist Alliance, Resistance, Green Left Weekly and Democratic Socialist Perspective.
The latest issue of Chain Reaction, the national magazine of Friends of the Earth, is devoted to CSG. Several of the articles, including one by Hutton, enthuse at the possibility of taking environmental activism out of the latte belt and establishing a broader movement around CSG.
Occasionally, Hutton allows a much wider agenda to surface, as when he told a forum in Brisbane last year the battle against CSG "is the battle for the end of the fossil fuel industry". He added: "This is the end game."
"I said that in the context that there is only a few decades left of fossil fuels," he explains to Inquirer. "I don't see what I'm doing as part of the end of the era - I'm just saying the era is coming to an end."
That is hotly disputed by the industry - and by Hartcher.
"The point is that NSW is facing a gas supply crisis," says Hartcher.
"The supply contracts start to run out in 2014, and one-third of the energy in NSW comes from gas. The traditional argument of the Greens is to say, 'We're not against mining,' but then to find a number of hurdles they can put in the way, so it will be either too costly or too time-consuming for people to proceed.
"That's what they've tried to do with CSG and they've had a certain degree of success because they've been able to develop a sense of concern among rural communities. On this issue they've been able to pose as the friends of rural communities, but they are the classic wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Had the Namoi water study been negative, the Greens would be holding it up like a holy icon, but they have gone completely silent about it."
Hartcher hopes the land use policy will be released by the end of the month, and CSG extraction will begin in NSW next year. He's also hoping the policy will break the nexus between radical activists and conservative bushies.
"Farmers should receive some benefit from CSG and the government is determined to address that in its strategic land use plan," he says. "We've got to change the paradigm from, 'Oh no, they've discovered gas on my land', to 'Great, they've discovered gas on my land, and that's going to give me a drought-proofing income.' "
As for water v sediment in Lismore, Hutton was noncommittal: "I saw Boudicca briefly at a film showing and she indicated she thought that scientist was wrong, but I didn't get a chance to ask why that was the case."
As the CSG fight in NSW gets near the pointy end, it seems not all the nasty propaganda in this debate is coming from one direction.
Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/csg-fight-is-about-to-ignite/story-fn59niix-1226452782737
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