Metgasco license suspended

Woman with teapot
(Dunedin Cafe, 2007)

This is how I am feeling this morning, over my cup of tea, having just heard the news that the Bentley Blockade has been successful. Rather bemused but very pleased.

The NSW Government has suspended the Metgasco license for an exploratory gas drill in northern NSW and has passed information to the corruption inquiry!

The licence was revoked because Metgasco had not consulted with the community adequately.

Margo Kingston, the citizen reporter who alerted us to the ongoing crisis in the north writes that she is "privileged to report an historic people's movement proving that citizen co-operation can change the world without violence."

Go Margo!

The Bentley Blockade (pic #lockthegate)

Margo had reported that senior police were worried that the smashing of the Bentley Blockade this weekend was a lose lose situation. They were right and the NSW Government is to be congratulated for seeing sense. Now the license needs to be cancelled.

It is a back down that will inspire many others who are threatened by fracking and coal mining activities.

If you want ot be inspired, listen to this woman talk about why she is taking action against the Whitehaven Maules Creek Mine:

85 - the new 69

Eighty five, it sounds so innocuous and reminds me of ladders for some reason. Perhaps there were 85 steps on the snakes and ladders we used to play as kids. I had not known 85's urban dictionary meaning 'Distortion of the truth way beyond belief and or An Absolute Avalanche of Bullshit' but in NSW this week it is a definition that is on everybody's lips because 'eighty five' is the name of the firm that was set up by State Liberal Party to funnel illegal funds into their party coffers. The ICAC inquiry is showing that illegal funds came from property developers amongst others and it appears that they were donating in return for favours. The choice of name for the slush fund shows just how cynical the players were (and are).

Doctor locked on to protest

The folk who set the company up and arranged for donations were no small fry. The NSW Premier has had to resign and now his ministers are falling, one after the other. The Minister for Police resigned today.  There are so many links between the corrupt players of both political parties that it is difficult to keep track, but the  ABC has created an amazing interactive web graphic to help interested observers.

These corrupted politicians were responsible for issuing the coal mining and fracking licenses that have so incensed the citizenry. NSW farmers and their supporters are saying all the licenses should now be withdrawn.

This morning a group of doctors and medical students have locked themselves onto rigs at the Leard State Forest development to protest development of the coal mine there.

GetUp campaign poster

The Federal Treasurer said on the radio the other day that he found the sight of wind farms that you can see from a distance from the road to Canberra ' deeply offensive'.   Suddenly the whole quagmire of corporate control of government becomes blindingly obvious.

The Green Party has long called for a Federal ICAC but they have been thwarted by both major parties in their attempts to get one established. Our democracy depends on unencumbered politicians and it is now clear that a federal corruption watchdog is needed as well as a discussion of how to fund elections.

One of the people who has helped keep us informed about developments in the bush is the citizen journalist Margo Kingston. She and ICAC might together be pivotal in turning Australia away from it's path of climate destruction to one of climate rescue. Go Margo! Go ICAC!

Addendum: the medics have been arrested...  arrested for trying to protect people' health.

Mining and corrupt NSW Politics

This art and music blog is once again overtaken by politics. Current NSW twitter feed is astonishing and irresistible.

Geoffrey Watson at ICAC hearing

We are finding out through the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) just how corrupt NSW politicians on both sides of politics are. We heard about the dealings of Labour power broker Eddie Obeid and his colleagues in the last inquiry, and now we are hearing about equally devious and illegal practices in the Liberal Party.  A fourth Liberal MP has just stood down.

 It turns out that mining companies (among others)  have been buying favours.

At the same time as ICAC is sitting citizens are protesting on the farms against the mining companies and trying to prevent them destroying farmland and forests. Over 120 people have been arrested at the Leard Forest site (see blogpost of April 3rd), among them local farmers, doctors and others who have come to support them.

Go Knitting Nannas!

Now police are preparing to break down the Bentley blockade which is a gathering to prevent Coal Seam Gas drilling on a farm in northern NSW.  It has been suggested that the police should arrest the current government instead. The blockade has wide local support, including a group of knitting Nanas from Armidale. They are knitting yellow ties.

The Federal Government is enmeshed in the corruption as well as the State Government. The Federal Assistant Treasurer Arthur Sinodinos has already had to stand aside and there is an increasing feeling that the stench goes right to the top. The Government is paying spies to track what the population is saying on social media and intimidate them. As I blogged previously, government employees are particularly in the firing line.

When you have corrupt governments licensing corrupting mining companies and citizens being arrested for trying to protect the land that the corrupt politicians have sold off, it is time to change how we are governed.

I read that an increasing number of people are dying trying to protect their land: Study Finds Global Surge in Murders of Environmental Activists.  It makes me wonder how far corporate criminals and the people in their pay are willing to go in Australia.