Anti-fracking petition with 10,000 names presented at Parliament House

Lock the Gate Alliance, Western Rivers Alliance, The Wilderness Society, and their supporters are demanding the government ban new gas projects on the floodplains of the Lake Eyre Basin.

Lock the Gate Alliance Queensland coordinator Ellie Smith said that despite repeated election promises to protect Lake Eyre Basin floodplains, the government has given petroleum companies authority to survey for gas across hundreds of thousands of hectares in the region.

She said the government had undertaken numerous rounds of consultation with Traditional Owners, local landholders, and other stakeholders, but had repeatedly delayed making a decision.

She and others fear this is because the oil and gas lobby has influenced the government into backtracking on its earlier election promises.

"While the government dawdles, the Resources Department is wading through exploration applications from gas companies covering some of the most precious parts of the Lake Eyre Basin," she said.

"We estimate more than 800,000 hectares of Lake Eyre Basin floodplains are now covered in gas tenements.

"The further these applications progress, the harder it will be for the government to claw them back. Queenslanders need decisive action now. We can't wait another election cycle for more hollow promises."

Origin Energy announced last September it was relinquishing its gas exploration permits in the Channel Country, but in its half yearly report last week said it would "transfer its interest in five permits back to (joint venture partner) Bridgeport", while its remaining 12 permits in the Lake Eyre Basin were under "strategic review".

The company had been granted 11 petroleum leases across more than 250,000ha of the Channel Country by the state government in 2021.

Lock the Gate's national coordinator Ellen Roberts said they would like to see Origin get out of gas altogether, and relinquish its tenements totally, rather than selling them off to smaller operators.

"Selling off fracking tenements does nothing to reduce greenhouse emissions, and creates a great risk that if these smaller operators go bust, Queensland taxpayers will be forced to step in and pay for the clean-up, as occurred recently in WA," she said.

"Rather than risk this, the Palaszczuk government needs to honour its multiple promises and make good on the mandate it has been elected with for the previous three elections and protect the pristine rivers and creeks of the Lake Eyre Basin by banning new gas in the floodplain."

Western Rivers Alliance coordinator Riley Rocco addressed the hundred or so activists at Parliament House, saying the petition was one way of demonstrating their concerns.

"The month of March will be critical for the Channel Country, as this issue is not going away," Mr Rocco said.

He asked everyone to refer back to the 1996 'Cotton on the Cooper' debate.

"Back in 1996, scientific claims supported claims by local graziers that cotton irrigation was too risky for the environment, and the state stopped the cotton growing plan," he said.

"In 2004, it declared a moratorium on large-scale irrigation works. Currently, the incumbent Queensland Labor government says it backs that ban."

Activists were told that if there were no fat bullocks to come off the Channel Country, there would be no Channel Country.

The group of 100 activists peacefully marched from Parliament House to the Premier's office in William Street to deliver the petition, to the Director-General of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet.

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