2014-06-01
Chris Harris
We won.
The Bentley Blockade, in northern NSW, halted Metgasco's proposed tight sands gas drilling operation near Lismore. That victory, in itself, carries real significance in the struggle against the destruction of large areas of the Australian bush and against the increasing grip of the corporate world on our political and economic systems.
There is a more important point that has been missed or, at least, not widely understood. That point is that the opposition to unconventional gas drilling (which includes CSG, tight sands and shale gas), led by the national Lock the Gate movement is arguably the single most important community movement since the moratorium marches of the early 1970s.
Tens of thousands of people around Australia have already been involved in the current campaigns against gas development. Many of those people have never been involved in any political campaign in their lives and certainly not ones that involve direct action, as they were at Bentley.
The involvement of thousands of people at Bentley came despite the risk of being involved in a direct confrontation with hundreds of riot police on May 20, 2014. Only a back down by the NSW Government prevented this confrontation.
Far and wide
The implications of an extension of the opposition, already occurring at locations such as Bentley, Leard Forest/Maules Creek, the Pilliga, the Scenic Rim in Queensland — throughout Australia — is profound. For the first time in 20 years, an industry and a political establishment that has gone largely unchallenged for a generation or more is confronting organised opposition to resource development on a scale it has never encountered.
Not only is the breadth of opposition to the development unprecedented but so is, in places, its depth. In parts of the north rivers area in NSW, such as Byron Bay, polls have shown up to 97 per cent opposition to unconventional gas mining. Even in traditionally more conservative communities, such as Lismore and Richmond Valley LGA, polls showed 87% and 65% opposition respectively, demonstrating that opposition comes from every section of the community. As NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham noted, these are polling figures normally only seen in North Korea.
Once the genie is out it may be impossible for the political establishment to put it back in the bottle. The planned development of CSG has unleashed a series of political and social forces that the resource industry and its allies in Government, within Labor, Liberal and National parties, never anticipated.
As with the moratorium marches it is possible to envisage that the current protests will generate opposition not just to resource developments but to many other societal changes proposed by the politico-industrial nexus.
A key factor in the spread of opposition to unconventional gas is the motivation provided to thousands of people by the blockades, such as Bentley. The eclectic mix of thousands of people from all works of life, all equally committed to the same outcomes, has led to a resurgence of optimism among many people who had felt discouraged by a political environment in which corruption and privilege has led to a meaner, less equal, less compassionate society.
Just the beginning
The moratorium marches may not have led to an early exit from Vietnam but they did galvanise an entire generation of activists. In effect, the Vietnam moratorium led directly into the struggles that halted rainforest logging, preserved the Great Barrier Reef and stopped the damming of the lower Franklin River. A myriad other victories both major and minor including those in the Daintree, the Tasmanian forests and pulp-mill campaigns and the anti-uranium movement that catalysed the creation of Kakadu National Park all followed.
Many of the key activists in those later campaigns were teenagers or young adults during the moratorium era and they transferred the political lessons they learned into other campaigns.
More broadly there are strong similarities between the Vietnam moratorium movement and the Lock the Gate campaigns. Participation crosses not only the political divide but also the social divide. Just as the moratorium involved old, young, conservative, progressive, churches, trade unions, city and country, so too does the movement against unconventional gas development.
Many individuals, referring to the moratorium note that it was the first time they have been motivated to be politically active. From the ABC site, 80 Days:
“As a young teenager the war in Vietnam taught me to open my eyes and take an interest in the world around me," said Bob Johnson.
“Prior to this, politics and the war were just something that were in the background, on a loop, on TV,” said Ian.
It is possible to argue that other campaigns such as the Franklin and some of the community campaigns such as Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) have similar hallmarks, being campaigns that activated large numbers of otherwise passive individuals. Given the passive and quiescent nature of Australian politics, since about 1985 (post the Palm Sunday peace marches) both inside and outside universities, it is more accurate to see some of these as the final fling of post-Vietnam activism or as having a less significance societal impact.
Since the mid-80s the environment movement has been largely passive and there have been few other major social movements challenging the increasing dominance of the politico-industrial alliance of the Coalition and Labor parties and big business.
The moratorium and the anti-gas campaigns bear other similarities in that, unlike the RAR, which was in defence of an the ideas of decency, fairness and justice they are defending tangible things dear to those involved: peoples' lives in the case of the moratorium and peoples' land and clean water and air in the anti-gas mining campaign.
Similarly, unlike, some of the other “national” campaigns which were campaigns on regional issues (e.g. NSW rainforests, Tasmanian pulpmill, Franklin), people in virtually all parts of the country are directly affected by unconventional gas.
While it is in NSW and Queensland that the unconventional gas industry has been most active, every other state in Australia has CSG, tight sands or shale gas resources with many states already covered with active exploration licences. In Victoria, where there has been a moratorium, to date, Gippsland, Geelong, the Surfcoast, Otways and Western Districts are currently covered by over 450,000 hectares of approved coal, coal seam gas, tight gas and shale gas exploration licences.
Bentley is likely to be a key moment in demonstrating that a united community, bound together across all the normally opposing and disparate elements of the political spectrum can triumph over its opposition. Whatever it claimed the politico-industrial establishment blinked for no other reason that it could not deal with having to confront a united community. That opposition included large parts of its own traditionally supportive voter base, including the local police force. A confrontation would have meant facing down up to 8000 people using riot police brought in from Sydney and elsewhere.
The degree of unanimity in the Lismore and regional community was demonstrated by the difficulty the police had in finding any local firm prepared to feed the 800 strong police force or house its police horses.
That win coming, as it did, against a united front of both major political parties, the mining industry — the most powerful industry in Australia, some of the establishment elements of the farming hierarchy, large elements of the mass media and the corruption that underpins all those parts of the establishment is arguably far-reaching. It signals a potential halt, or at least slowing, to decades of business as usual in which the wishes of ordinary Australians has been ignored by elected politicians.
Chris Harris is the outgoing Greens National Campaign Coordinator and spent a week at the Bentley Blockade.