Liberals & Nationals back fracking as Gloucester residents get shafted

Gloucestervalley

MEDIA RELEASE

6 August 2014

The Greens NSW mining spokesperson Jeremy Buckingham condemned the government’s renewal of AGL’s Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL 285) over the Gloucester Valley, saying it was the start of fracking in NSW again and that local residents were being given less protection than those in Western Sydney.

Coal seam gas activity is banned within 2km of urban areas, however, AGL has been given permission to frack within a few hundred metres of houses at the outskirts of the town of Gloucester.

“This is a clear signal that the Liberal and National parties are pro-fracking and pro-coal seam gas,” said Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham.

“This is a dark day for NSW with the Baird government giving the green light to fracking once again, including near people’s homes,

“It’s outrageous that the people of Gloucester will have fracking within a few hundred metres of their homes, while people in Western Suburbs enjoy a 2 kilometre buffer.

“The community is overwhelmingly opposed, the scientists have warned of contamination of groundwater and the Manning River, and there is no clear plan to dispose of waste products.

“The local community will blockade fracking in the Gloucester Valley, just as they resisted at Bentley in the Northern Rivers and elsewhere,” he said.

Contact: Max Phillips - 9230 2202 or 0419 444 916

2 comments

  • In Tasmania, we’re watching with interest to see how the LNP governments in other states are trampling over peoples rights.
    We also have the absurd case where it is now allowed in law, through precedent, to punch a protester in the face, because one’s a bit stressed, but the protester can be liable for $10k and/or 3 months in jail (and presumably a few more punches in the face) for protesting. Things are getting a little bizarre. Someone drank the Kool-Aid and I don’t think it was me!

    Like

  • More wind less gas.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s