Quitting coal in Gippsland
Livia Cullen
For over 18 months Quit Coal has been supporting communities across Gippsland – helping them build resilient community groups and a regional alliance ready to Lock the Gate against the coal and unconventional gas industries.
Gippsland is an agricultural hub for Victoria, producing $2 billion worth of food each year and housing many thriving regional communities. It is also an area rich in natural beauty and biodiversity and with pristine beaches, lakes and mountains, it is a popular tourist destination.
Despite all this, the Victorian government has granted mining exploration licences to the coal and unconventional gas industries that cover over 80% of the region and are likely, with lax regulation, to allow these industries to start operations across Gippsland before the year's end.
In the last month we've seen the Victorian government endorse the National Harmonised Framework, a regulatory framework developed by the government as a superficial response to community concern about the impacts of unconventional gas extraction ('fracking').
Although the government claims to have consulted communities, the large number of submissions from community groups and organisations have been ignored and the endorsed framework remains identical to the draft prepared at the end of last year.
With the framework now in place the state government is preparing to lift the current moratorium on fracking. As soon as it is lifted, the coal and unconventional gas industries intend to turn Gippsland into a coal and gas field.
Local farmers, landowners, and residents are extremely concerned about the impacts this will have on their health and the future of their communities.
An explosion of coal and gas mining in Gippsland means mass industrialisation, huge risks to human and animal health, the chance of surface waterways becoming polluted, groundwater being contaminated and a lowering of the water table.
But most of all it poses a great threat to their livelihoods – their farms, their businesses and their communities.
With the lifting of the moratorium drawing ever closer, the unconventional gas industry is pulling out the big guns with the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association hard at work touring MPs around their sites in an attempt to win them over and even rolling out former Howard government minister Peter Reith at an anti-CSG community meeting in Mirboo North.
Community opposition
But Gippsland communities are not having a bar of it. No matter how strong the gas industries marketing campaigns, nothing can change the fact that communities across Gippsland and a huge number of Victorians are strongly opposed to unconventional gas mining in Victoria.
Since Quit Coal began organising in Gippsland over 18 months ago, we've seen the town of Poowong declare itself Victoria's first 'coal seam gas free community'.
We've seen the Mirboo North community collect almost 10,000 signatures calling for a moratorium on all coal and unconventional gas mining until it can be scientifically proven safe.
And we've seen the Seaspray community organise into a force to be reckoned with since Gina Rinehart's Lakes Oil began testing their gas wells in May, ready to declare the town 'gasfield free' by the end of the month.
Huge numbers of other Gippsland communities including Inverloch, Leongatha, Kongwak, Wattle Bank, Yarragon South, Allambee, Newry, Maffra, Sale, Longford, The Honeysuckles, Harmers Haven, Boolarra, Koo Wee Rup, Bayles, Drouin, Darnum, Toongabbie, Foster and Bena are also joining the fight against coal and gas.
We've seen the damage these industries can wreak on the environment, on ecosystems, on animals and on humans both internationally and on our own shores in New South Wales and Queensland.
We've also seen how effective the Lock the Gate community movement can be, with both Dart Energy and Metgasco, two huge mining companies, suspending their operations in the Hunter Valley and the Northern Rivers region of NSW after a prolonged, organised and intense community backlash and the resulting changes to government regulation.
It's more important now than ever that we show these destructive industries that they have no social licence to operate in Gippsland − that while the government might grant them a licence to dig up Gippsland, local communities are strongly opposed to what they are doing.
Gippsland residents with a huge number of Victorians in support are prepared to do whatever it takes to protect their communities and their livelihoods from the devastating effects of unconventional gas mining. The Victorian Government and the gas industry had better prepare for a big fight ahead.
Livia Cullen is a campaigner with the Quit Coal collective of Friends of the Earth, Melbourne. liviamhcullen@gmail.com