Coal seam gas development and community conflict: a comparative study of community responses to coal seam gas development in Chinchilla and Tara, Queensland

Abstract

The Australian coal seam gas (CSG) industry has grown rapidly from around 1,000 CSG wells in 2009 to more than 6,500 wells in 2014. Exploration and development has occurred in the predominantly agricultural areas of Queensland's Western Downs. The crossover of these two competing industries, agriculture and CSG, has placed the rural west under a great deal of socioeconomic and environmental pressure and led to significant controversy. The rural subdivisions of Tara perceived in the media and simplistically labelled as a conflict driven by the environmental impacts of CSG is far more complex. The root causes of this conflict run deeper. Rather than using an environmental lens, this research rather takes a social identity perspective, which has yielded counterintuitive findings. The study reveals that the conflict dramatically emerged because the CSG industry became enmeshed in the stigmatised identity of ‗Blockies', as the residents of ‗Blocks' within the Tara subdivisions are called. I also elucidate the fact that the stigmatised Blockies' failure to sustain this conflict ultimately led to its transformation. The anti-CSG ‗Blockies' took issue with CSG as a mean to manage, dissolve, and negotiate the stigma attached with the label ‗Blockie' that socially excluded, discriminated, and marked them as devalued since the subdivisions were established in 1980s. Behind the nexus between the Tara subdivision-based anti-CSG groups and the Lock the Gate movement, no shared encoded meanings or objectives exist. The Blockies' convergence with the movement was merely commensal in nature, which thus provided the rejected self with a positive reference point and a moral argument for being evaluated through the movement's identity.iii

The Absent Presence of the State in Large-Scale Resource Extraction Projects

“…This meant that organised resistance only formed once projects were in full development and many landholders had already entered into agreements. However, Makki (2015) investigated the identity politics within the Western Downs and put forward an alternative explanation. He noted that the perceived 'protester' identities of alliance members and associated community groups was incompatible with the predominantly conservative agrarian identities of the region's other residents (also Makki and van Vuuren 2016).…”

“…Small-scale residential landholders further west, on the other hand, found themselves in the midst of multiple gas fields. Among those living on so-called 'lifestyle blocks', located on agriculturally less valuable land, are members of vulnerable and lower income groups who could hardly afford a few hundred dollars to have water in their tanks or dams tested (Makki 2015;Makki and van Vuuren 2016). 9 The effectiveness of their challenges has therefore generally been lower than that of other groups in the Western Downs.…”

“…Established since the 1980s on poor agricultural land, these subdivisions are primarily affordable residential properties. Here, the civil disobedience movement against CSG developments began (see Makki 2015).…”

Is the gas industry a good neighbour? A comparison of UK and Australia experiences in terms of procedural fairness and distributive justice

“…Initially, media focussed on regional economic benefits (Mitchell and Angus 2016), including jobs and growth. However, from 2010-11, the media coverage changed its tone, corresponding with release of the US anti-fracking film -Gasland, the emergence of the Australian protest movement -'Lock the Gate', and Queensland government approval of four CSGto-liquid natural gas (LNG) megaprojects (Makki 2015).…”