AS the State government inquiry into coal seam gas mining was being held formally inside the doors of Club Taree yesterday, a vocal crowd assembled at the club’s top car park draped in blue and voicing opposition to coal seam gas mining.
In fact hundreds turned out yesterday, many wearing blue, in response to Manning Alliance’s call to ‘Project Blue’, the Manning’s protest against CSG mining.
Various speakers spoke to the roars of gathered supporters with the prevailing message that the time had come to safeguard the Manning Valley’s future.
Susie Russell certainly said as much asking the question directly, “People need to take action, at what point do we need st stand up to our future?”
These sentiments were echoed by Dave Saul of the United Myall Lakes Residents Against Gas Extraction, imploring policy makers to learn the lessons of history.
“In the 1940s governments were saying what a great thing asbestos was, and now we sit wondering what were they thinking? It won’t even be in two or three generations time that we’ll be saying what were they thinking, it will take just one generation to ask, “what on earth were they thinking?”
Burrell Creek farmer Bruce Robertson spoke to emphatic cheers when he spoke to the demonstrators ahead of his address to the formal inquiry.
“This not the time for passive acceptance of the unacceptable.”
The crescendo was reached when the Greens Jeremy Buckingham spoke to the demonstrators. “I think the State government brought the inquiry here because they thought not enough people here cared. Oh, how wrong they were.”
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