Here’s my contribution to the book:
I came to the coal seam gas issue late, having moved into the Manning Valley from another part of the electorate in 2012. At first I suspected a conspiracy theory however a quick internet search revealed countless scientific papers, court cases and legitimate concerns coming out of the US and Queensland.
Every right minded person could see that fracking was wrong on so many levels: human and livestock health; regional, national and international economics; politics corrupted by donations, a revolving door of political staff and conflicted politicians ignoring the ministerial code of conduct; serious environmental issues for land, water and air; etc. Fracking simply isn’t compatible with sustainable rural communities. My main motivation for joining the campaign was to counter the extraordinary industry and government ‘spin’.
I immediately set up my work desk in the same fashion as my old media employers, AAP and Reuters. FIFO to me has a completely different meaning: Funnel In Funnel Out of information where a huge amount of media coverage, social media posts, industry PR and data etc was analysed and edited as it came in and then sent to the right person or group in the ever growing anti-fracking movement.
Mornings were spent directing information to the right people and the afternoons were preparing the next day’s mainstream media coverage. Within a few months, I was having such an impact that I was asked to sit on Lock The Gate’s Strategy Committee where I took on other campaigns in conjunction with Gloucester.
On NSW’s north coast, 700 riot police were preparing to move in on 5000 local residents camped at Bentley. My campaign there included Alan Jones reading out my debunk of the Minister’s press release, exposing three blatant lies. In the last week there were up to five phone calls per day to the Bentley coordinator, Ian Gillard, getting the latest information and filling him in on what would be in the next day’s newspapers.
The fact that the fracking company Metgasco’s main shareholder was in business with corrupt miniter Ed Obeid apparently stunned the police negotiating officer. When we finally broke the police’s will to move in, we knocked the federal budget off the front page as Metgasco was referred to ICAC.
The Victorian campaign was short, sharp and effective. While the chair of Victoria’s Gas Taskforce, Peter Reith was doing the talk back radio circuit espousing the virtues of coal seam gas, I was writing stories for Margo Kingston’s NoFibs and on the phone to The Age and ABC, exposing Reith and the taskforce as all working for the gas industry. The outrage forced the government to enact a moratorium, which turned into a complete ban, still in place today.
The Gloucester campaign was entirely different to Victoria and Bentley. The multi-billion dollar company AGL Energy was well resourced, well connected and determined to frack the joint. The fast paced media environment had to be responsive to the daily debate, which we mostly lead, leaving the company trying to respond to us.
When they did try to counter our argument, for example on the irrigation trial which failed to deal with the salt, we had already moved onto another topic: the failing economics, health issues, problems with milk and cattle contamination, etc.
Ensuring the at the AGL board had a personal copy of Groundswell’s Exposing The Risks just before a critical board meeting, has a profound effect. Faced with relentless community opposition and a hostile media highlighting every error they made, they realised fracking was futile. To their credit and thanks to our campaign, AGL have since gotten out of coal seam gas and are now apparently focused on a sustainable energy future.
The gas issue is different from anything I’ve ever done in my 40+ year career. I can’t accurately quantify the CSG campaign – there have been hundreds of mainstream media articles that I’ve either organised, written or referred to the relevant expert.
Over 60,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook and 23,000 ‘tweets’ have been gathered by working 12 hours per day, sometimes more. Most issue event or issue based media campaigns last a month or two.
I’ve now been working on this issue full time for more than five and a half years, and will not stop until justice is done for the harmed in Queensland.
See Also: NSW EPA Fines Against Coal Seam Gas Fracker, AGL In 2013
