An extended interview with Minister for Planning and Inrastructure, Brad Hazzard in response to the coal seam gas public forum in Lismore.
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An extended interview with Minister for Planning and Inrastructure, Brad Hazzard in response to the coal seam gas public forum in Lismore.
The so-called experts Minister Hazzard brought with him said things like “the chemicals used in fracking are the kind of things you find under your kitchen sink” which is a line is straight from the industry’s PR manual.
UNEP recently released a report which talks about the hazardous chemicals used in fracking. Here’s the link:http://na.unep.net/api/geas/articles/getArticleHtmlWithArticleIDScript.php?article_id=93
Also, the federal government has just provided funds for the national industrial chemical agency to conduct risk assessments for all fracking chemicals. I don’t think they’d bother doing that if these were ‘kitchen sink’ chemicals.
The government know there is no network of monitoring bores in the Northern Rivers and they are allowing Metgasco to produce gas without baseline monitoring in place. Scandalous stuff. No wonder people were angry. I think the audience was far too nice to this scoundrel.
Thomas George has not heard or is not heeding the views of the people he is supposed to be representing. If 87% or more of our local population are saying no to CSG, then why isn’ t he standing with us instead of against us?
The meeting was just a ruse by Minister Hazzard to snow opponents with bland assurances that everything is OK.
Unfortunately for him there were more experts in the audience than on the bench and they didn’t take kindly to bureaucrats spouting the industry line.
It was the NGO NTN that informed NICNAS what chemicals were being used – they had no idea until then.
The bottom line is we are very well informed, far better evidently than the Minister and his advisers, and have access to the latest scientific papers which we actually read and as a result of that there is no way we will allow fracking of our area to proceed.
We will do whatever it takes to stop it.
Believe this.
The meeting was about the power of democracy over autocracy. Hazzard is straight out of the old manual about how to manage power over people. There was nothing in his language other than spin. The CSG issue is bigger than methane gas and toxic chemical; it is about whether the Australian people want to take back their land from the corporations, their parliament from corrupt politicians, and their future from the mining lobby and its interests. At what point will be stand up and take to the streets, as they do in Athens and Madrid? When will we take action for the sake of our future as free citizens?
Mr Hazzard has just said over and over again in this interview how bad the Labor Govt.’s approach was and how good and open and transparent this Govt’s policy is. This tells us nothing. I was at the meeting and wanted to hear what the ‘experts’ had to say. It was apparent to ALL who were there that they had nothing informative to say – they could not answer the many informed questions asked of them.
And worse – it was apparent that they are going to implement their ‘policy’ no matter what scientific information comes to light, no matter what the overwhelming majority of the population wants, no matter what the damage sustained will be.
Brad Hazzard never answers any difficult questions. He just goes onto automatic repeat – previous Labor government – 18 months consultation – we believe we’ve got the balance right – blah – blah – blah. I emailed him with two questions:
1. Will there be water, air, aquifer and soil baseline studies at Glenugie before Metgasgo is allowed to start drilling?
2. According to the Precautionary Principle you shouldn’t proceed until the process is proved safe. Since that clearly isn’t the case, how do you justify proceeding?
So far I haven’t got a reply but it does seem like his office has shut down a week early.