Re John Vaughan’s letter in last week’s Echo. What a load of self-serving tripe. Funny how tens of millions of dollars are seen as ‘measly’. If that is the case, then he won’t mind him and his mates losing it all as Metagasco goes belly-up on its speculative venture, which has no social license from the 85-99 per cent of people living in the towns and villages of the north coast.
It kind of makes his entire argument specious and fallacious if he really does not consider all that money as a substantial amount. Also the veiled threats of selling off to bigger players is the kind of extortion the communities of Australia, which are now enduring the foreign invasion of their locales, have been subject to.
Add to that the fact that these invaders are using our water at exponential rates, and in the case of Chinchilla, which is experiencing drought, their dam is quickly receding as gas company trucks line up to draw water from the weir for their FIFO camps.
There is a war brewing between the people who live in the land and the towns being destroyed by CSG miners and their facilitators. I suggest Mr Vaughan join those who value their land and water rather than trying to fob off their concerns or end up very much in the losing camp. Because no amount of self-deluding bluster will make people back down.
No amount of extortion or heavy-handed policing, idle threats or real threats to sell Australians out to multinationals and foreign corporations will bend people’s will because this battle is a battle for our livelihoods, our children’s clean world. It is a battle Australians who care about their future will win. And that is no idle threat.
Mike Mizzi, Ocean Shores
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
