Wandoan fights big gas 'bullying'

As of Tuesday evening, after four days, the petition calling on QGC to “stop bullying Wandoan’s farmers” had gathered 856 supporters.

QGC appears impervious to the calls, stating only that the process and time-frames for applications and landholder responses are set by the state government.

“The petition calling for an extension of time to submit responses is not within QGC’s control,” a spokesperson said.

The petition’s author, former environmental engineer Rebecca McNicholl said that regardless of the government’s legislation, if QGC was true to its claim of treating landholders with fairness, decency and respect, they should be amenable to more time being given.

“I see this as bullying. QGC might be within their rights but they should see that people don’t have enough time.

“Having worked as an environmental consultant, I know how long it takes to get a land survey done.”

Her comments were corroborated by local land management consultant and landholder Wayne Chapman, who said it could take three or four days of continuous work to collect GPS data then analyse it and prepare a submission.

“There’s definitely not enough time for a proper rebuttal.”

The petition asks for “at least” 45 days for up to 175 field surveys and the collection of farming history and collation of data to take place.

QGC is seeking to have the SCL status over 120,000ha removed on the criteria that the slope of the land is greater than 3 per cent.

Ms McNicholl grew up at Dulacca and states in the petition that QGC’s conduct “simply serves to further distress farmers” still getting over the impact of the now-shelved $7 billion Glencore Xtrata coal project.

“Community depression is already endemic,” she said.

Roma solicitor Tom Marland is acting for a number of clients preparing objections and described QGC’s approach, lodging their application just before the repeal of the Strategic Cropping Land Act 2011, possibly negating the need to comply with more stringent environmental protection measures set up under new legislation, as cynical.

“What they’re doing isn’t illegal but what a way to introduce yourself to a district,” he said.

“If QGC had talked to landholders there would have been a much better response.

“Now people feel the wool has been pulled over their eyes.”

As it stands, landholders have until today, August 22 to respond to the QGC action.

Mr Marland said he hoped enough people would lodge a response to create an element of doubt within government circles and lead to a granting of an extension of time.

“I don’t think the government ever envisioned someone would lodge an application of this magnitude,” he said.

He believed other CSG companies would be watching to see the outcome of QGC’s block application and said he was alive to the possibility of others now contemplating a similar move, despite not being able to use previous less rigorous legislation.

Companies wanting to strike out SCL status only have to prove one of eight criteria and could “take another bite of the cherry” by contesting on a different criteria at a later date, Mr Marland said, raising the prospect of ongoing contests.

He was also critical of the legislation for placing the onus on landholders to prove their status rather than on the company wishing to strike out the status.

“QGC only had to spit out a government map, and that’s on a scale of 1:150,000.

“People struggle to locate the areas in question on a map that size, then they have to ground truth it all.

“The department hasn’t done any community workshops to explain what to do to assist people – the first they knew of this was a letter in the mail.”

The Department of Natural Resources and Mines was asked to comment but no response had been received at the time of going to press.