Lock the Gate Alliance

Lock the Gate Alliance has condemned the Independent Planning Commission’s (IPC) decision to approve a 19-year extension to the Hunter Valley Operations (HVO) coal mine, saying it exposes the failure of NSW’s planning system to prioritise community wellbeing over mining lobby interests.

Experts, health professionals and gasfields residents will gather at a conference in Chinchilla to discuss the public health impacts of Queensland’s coal seam gas industry. 

Lock the Gate Alliance says Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher’s admission that the Narrabri gas project will be economically unviable without high gas prices should prompt the NSW Government to withdraw its support for the project. 

Coal mining companies shed thousands of jobs with little warning during the Hunter’s last coal downturn, and an extension to Hunter Valley Operations can’t substitute a proper plan to protect workers, says Hunter Renewal.

New polling has revealed that 85% of regional Hunter residents have experienced an extreme weather event in the past five years, and 80% say these events are driving up their cost of living.

The Lock the Gate Alliance says new laws introduced to Queensland Parliament today could undermine Queenslanders’ rights to scrutinise and object to mining projects that threaten their water, farmland and climate.

The NSW Department of Planning and Environment has approved a two-year extension to the Ulan coal mine near Mudgee, despite the project being previously invalidated in the NSW Land and Environment Court after the local climate change impacts were found to not be properly assessed. 

Lock the Gate Alliance has submitted new evidence to the WA Appeals Convenor showing that Texan fracking company Black Mountain Energy’s modelling found that proposed fracking wastewater ponds could overflow in above-average rainfall conditions — which are frequently experienced in the area — posing a contamination threat to the Martuwarra Fitzroy River.