Barnaby This is worth the look.

http://repealtheact.co.uk/2011/05/13/the-global-warming-doctrine-is-not-a-science/

http://www.freedomadvocates.org/articles/sustainable_development/agenda_for_the_21st_century_invades_australia_20080107270/

Can you please inform us if you are aware of this Agenda 21

Coal supplies will run out in three or four decades, or may be phased out before this if there is a breakthrough in renewables. So why on earth would we put all our money on coal and CSG at the risk of fracturing and polluting river systems, breaching of aquifers and huge water usage in the mining process ? are we insane or just driven by desire for profit and for the all too short electoral cycle which rules out long term consideration of the national interest.

*Please do not use my email for any mailing purposes*

Dear Senate Committee Members

Like many individuals concerned about the issue of Coal Seam Gas Fracking I am not your typical disaffected greenie but simply a citizen disturbed by the long term affects on our ground water and soil that this kind of mining can have.

I am not opposed to traditional forms of mining but I do take issue with practices that can have detrimental affects on our land and lifestyle.

Australia has huge mineral and gas reserves (we already have decades of gas supply with Gorgon, and Wheatstone has yet to come on line!) so this kind of activity is not an economic necessity hence I can’t help but view it as one being driven by uncontrolled greed (industry and government), impotency on the part government and a total disregard for the long term affects on agricultural land by both.

It is little wonder that the Greens are gaining favour with the average common sense voter - who else is there to turn to for our future’s sake!?

Vincent Dingjan

Dear Honorable Mr Joyce,

Please can you help promote this url at your meetings it is organized by some popular boardcasters in Sydney. Also your electorate can add their comments in how this country is run by the Gillard - Brown administration. I hope the coal seam gas can be banned on farms as I have seen a documentary relating to farmers in USA getting very ill and their farm water turning black.


I have just visited GoPetition and found the following page very interesting:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/australian-people-want-an-election.html

Kind Regards
Denise Hitchens.

Dear Barnaby

I saw you on the news last night putting your case to the Coal Seam Gas companies who are marching through our farmland doing as they please, including your own farm. I grew up on a sheep and cattle property west of Dalby, a property which has been in the news with the current owners fighting the CSG companies over possible waterway contamination. I know you have had personal experience with these companies so I don't need to tell you how utterly disrespectful they can be towards landowners rights.

Quite apart from the environmental damage, the reduction in farm values and productivity, the scarring and defacing of the natural beauty of the land - is the basic fact that these companies completely fail to acknowledge that these properties are people's homes. I'm sure you understand how much of a connection people from the land have with their landscape – how it is not just a location to carry on a business but something much deeper and more meaningful that this. I would have been a 3rd generation farmer had we not sold the farm some 15 years or so ago and I still feel that connection with the land even though I now live in Brisbane. My elderly father is so genuinely upset when he talks to the current owners and hears that they are proposing some 20 wells over an area of about 3500 acres of what had been a large part of the farm that he was born on and lived most of his life. That's 20 wells with all the connecting roads, pipes etc..

What troubles me is that in Queensland with both Labour and the LNP supporting this process (albeit with token comments on “being tough with the companies”) it leaves only the Greens or Mr Katter who are actively taking a strong stance against this development. I believe the recent closing down of the Cougar energy operation at Kingaroy was just a political stunt, as the Underground Gasification Process was always a radical, scientifically questionable and economically minor part of the plan to utilise CSG – so the government could afford to can it and look “tough” whilst allowing normal CSG wells to continue. I do not believe the government or the LNP would ever be properly “tough” with the main CSG developments as QLD needs the money far too badly. I suspect that many farmers would not mind the development so much if wells were more spaced apart and some genuine compromise made to locations, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.

At the next State and Federal elections I have to wonder who I would vote for. Are the Nationals going to take a stand against reckless CSG development and other coal mining in our valuable farming areas? I realise the need for a National/Liberal coalition in QLD to have any chance of gaining power but I suspect that people from the bush are going to vote in ways unheard of in the past where the issues of CSG are prominent. I hope your obvious passion about this issue can help to make some difference within Australian Conservative politics to the extent that to whatever gas mining takes place, it can at least be controlled enough to ensure people on the land do not have the soil under their care ruined beneath their feet.

Regards
Peter Kerr

I am not in agreement that a mining company can go on to privately owned land and mine for coal steam gas, even if the land owner is opposed to the mining. I can not believe that these multi national mining companies, who's main focus is profit, will not damage the land, wildlife, water and agriculture in the process. I strongly believe that the land owner should have a choice what is done to their land.

Barnaby,
The most frightening issue for rural landholders with CSG exploration and mining, is their record of destroying the salability and value of the rural property and home and leaving the owner uncompensated.
That is, the record of CSG Companies so far is that they have chosen to come onto properties and drill without offering to buy the property and just to offer a pitance on a drill hole basis. This leaves the property pitted with holes, tracks, possibly pipelines, chemicals, toxic evaporation ponds sand unsaleable and therefore valueless in the hands of the owner.
At least with the Coal mining Companies, they have a record of buying properties outright for upwards of twice the market value.

I hope this Senate enquiry gets the report out ASAP on this. Every passing day is another nail in Australia's coffin. This CSG is so dangerous. I am in Kyogle and we are preparing to fight a war here, we have thousands against it and they intend to run a gas pipeline over all of our vital farming land then attach wells. The QLD senate enquiry had unbelievably damning evidence presented linking this industry to cancer etc by expert Doctors and Scientists. This industry must stop until proven safe, not the other way around. I fear this is the next asbestos.

Landholder SHOULD receive a substantial royalty from any product extracted from their land. Additionally they should receive upfront payment for any degradation or loss in productive potential of their land, including for "dry holes".
This will not guarantee no loss of land quality, but it will provide some equity in the process