Green 'lawfare' activists target gas

GREEN activist tactics used to disrupt and delay coal projects are now being deployed against the gas sector with today’s announcement of a federal legal challenge.

The green activist group is challenging the Federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt’s, approval of the Santos GLNG Gas Field Development in Queensland. This action shows that no commodity is safe from the anti-resources activists. 

This comes as no surprise though given that we are well aware of the activists' strategy handbook ‘Stopping the Coal Export Boom’, which details tactics, such as litigation, to disrupt and delay resources projects. 

The strategy reads: “Legal challenges can stop projects outright, or can delay them in order to buy time to build a much stronger movement and powerful public campaigns. The can also expose the impacts, increase costs, raise investor uncertainty.”

Last year, Origin Energy Chief Executive Grant King said during a speech that if the green activist tactics deployed against coal projects had also been used against the gas sector we would have been unlikely to have seen the creation of an entirely new LNG export industry, which is delivering to Queensland faster growth in 2016-17, than any other state.

All resource projects go through world-class rigorous environmental approvals by scientists not green activists, therefore it is ludicrous that these taxpayer-funded groups can challenge years of scientific research and subsequent approvals that have passed scrutiny of state and federal governments. 

We can only hope that the Federal Court will at the outset of this case determine the ability of the Western Downs Alliance to meet costs if and when awarded against them.

Excerpt from Mr King's speech:

"Many of those opportunities will be in Queensland and whether they’re in Queensland or elsewhere in Australia, ought be developed for the benefit of the world. It is not right to say that coal is somehow bad and should not be developed. It was extraordinary we achieved approval for APLNG in 18 months to two years, but I would hate to be doing it today. We do need to make sure that there’s a balance in those approval processes between the legitimate concerns of communities and stakeholders in the development of these projects and the claims that might be more ideologically based because if we don’t do that, we will not give the world the benefit of the great resources that we have in Australia and that we have in Queensland. Queensland is well placed to be part of that great story of the future, which is one of fuel substitution, because there are great high quality resources in Queensland."

www.qrc.org.au

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