OPINION: I WAS interested in your piece “Farmers consulted on new CSG code”, The Land, November 21, which made reference to amendments to the Petroleum Onshore Bill.
It seemed to suggest this was a breakthrough for farmers and that “stakeholder talks have been held throughout the past six months to develop the code”.
It quoted my comments about farmers “breaking bread with the gas industry” and the “clandestine process”.
I just want to assure your readers of the accuracy of my comments.
There has been no discussion whatever about these amendments with “stakeholders”.
NSW Irrigators Council is not a stakeholder, Cotton Australia is not a stakeholder – both are bureaucratic representatives of farmers.
Whether these organisations have had a written and constitutional approval from their membership to negotiate in this way, I don’t know.
But there’s no doubt that farmers who’ve written to me indicate they wrote to, for example, the NSW Irrigators Council and Cotton Australia, asking these bodies not to sign off and received no response.
Now we have headlines such as “Stakeholders agree with gas exploration law changes: Draft code released for comment” (a statement from Minister for Resources and Energy Chris Hartcher, released November 19).
The fair dinkum stakeholders, the people at the coalface – farmers – have not had any input whatsoever.
And indeed, a whole range of these people were ignored.
Your readers would know, for example, that only this week the far North West region of NSW has declared its communities gas field free (Burren Junction, Merah North and Cryon).
I have a stack of correspondence on this matter from farmers, the people who are going to be affected by these amendments.
The Prime Minister of Australia has said there should be no entry to farming land or private property without the approval of the owner.
These amendments will do the opposite.
They will allow entry permits for environmental assessment without any access agreement.
Simply put, that means a right to walk onto your property, but just be happy that there’ll be no exploration.
Indeed, the amendments as I understand it provide for increasing penalties for obstruction, but it’s very difficult to sight the amendments.
I would respectfully submit that NSW Farmers and the NSW Irrigators Council have no authority to act on behalf of anybody without consulting directly with members the terms of those negotiations.
And I’ll bet London to a brick that individual members were not consulted, nor were they apprised of the terms under which these so-called amendments have been negotiated.
Yet again the farmers and the landowners of NSW have been sold out.
The disgraceful aspect of this is they’ve been sold out by people purporting to represent them.
