Lismore councillors Big Rob and Andrew Bing have led the charge to remove all CSG (coal seam gas) and nuclear free area signs from the Lismore local government area (LGA).
Speaking to the motion at the December 10 council meeting Cr Rob made it clear he wasn’t happy with what he sees as the negative messaging that the ‘CSG and nuclear free’ statement on the welcome to Lismore signage.
‘I even don’t like the signs on the bins, it has like 20 different things you cannot do,’ said Cr Rob emphasising his point.
Supporting the motion Cr Electra Jensen told the meeting that while she had supported the ‘No CSG’ campaign at the time but ‘we don’t want to rehash history [we want to] look to the future… it is time to move on.’
87 per cent against
The signs were part of the response to the coalition proposal to approve CSG mining in the region and led to a long and powerful campaign from the local community that brought together people from all walks of life including farmers, alternatives and conservatives who didn’t want to see their local region devastated by the impacts of CSG mining.
In 2012 then Cr Simon Clough put forward the motion to have a referendum on who supported CSG in the Lismore LGA at the local election.
‘A high proportion of people responded to it and it was a clear indication of the community’s opinion – 87 per cent opposition to CSG,’ Mr Clough told The Echo.
‘What particularly concerns me about the removal of the signs is that they are a symbol of the empowerment of the local community to protect itself and their farmland. We didn’t want the industrialisation of farmland, the loss of water, the poisoning of water, and the generation of methane; the fugitive emissions from CSG are huge,’ he explained.
Speaking to the meeting Cr Virginia Waters said, ‘this decision that we’re making is a really big decision’.
‘This is not just about the Lismore welcome signs. It’s about all of our villages and all of our people, and that we had such an incredible win. I think that we need to respect that, and we should still have these signs in our our town and villages, because it demonstrates what we can do as a community, and what we value as a community, and what we value as a community here is our landscape, is our water, and is our care for country.’
Cr Jasmine Knight-Smith told the meeting that she was proud of the CSG free signs.
‘When I drive into other towns and I see that they have signs that say ‘No CSG’, then I know that I’m driving to a place that’s probably really lovely,’ she said.
‘Every time I drive into this town and I see those signs, I feel proud, proud that our landscape isn’t marred by a sea of mines. If you look above Toowoomba and a variety of other places [that have mines] and you drive around those places, it’s horrific. It’s not attractive, it’s not beautiful. It detracts from the beauty of the region.’
Councillors voted six to four in favour of removing the CSG signs with Crs Gordon, Battista, Rob, Bing, Jensen and Krieg in favour and Crs Dalton-Earls, Knight-Smith, Guise and Waters opposed.
Rescission motion lodged
Following the meeting a rescission motion has been lodged by Crs Knight-Smith, Guise and Waters.
‘The fact that 87 per cent of LGA voted to be CSG free means the Krieg team would have their own constituents who would have supported the referendum,’ Cr Guise told The Echo.
‘I’d like them to listen to the sentiment of the community and recognise that they should proudly display those signs as a symbol of community pride and what we have gained from being gasfield free.
‘We’ve got a united, powerful community, we have protected our farmland, we have clean air and water. These signs are something that a farming and a food growing region should be proud of as it is essential to a food growing and agricultural region to have clean farmland and water,’ he said.
‘CSG is still a clear-a-present danger. You have communities fighting against gas fields across NSW and Australia right now. CSG is a dirty fossil fuel on par or worse than coal.’
Community response
There has already been a significant response on social media against the removal of the signs from across the community including those celebrating the opening of the Lismore to Bentley section of the rail trail, with Anna Mackney pointing out that Bentley was, ‘Where collectively we made history by stopping the CSG industry from drilling in our area’.
‘I think we have an extraordinary community,’ Mr Clough told The Echo.
‘People will be meeting in halls and homes and I believe they will be working out some wondrously humorous responses to what they propose to do with the signs.’
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