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Mick Daley was embedded with protestors at Glenugie on Monday, January 7, when police enforced the legal right of coal seam gas mining company Metgasco to commence drilling. This is his report.
Activist and lecturer in law at Southern Cross University, Aiden Ricketts says the protest, now in its seventh week, will not bow to police pressure. He says the police raid was an expensive “festival of force” by the O’Farrell Government.
LOCAL Area Commander, Superintendent Mark Holahan, has praised the “peaceful” action of protestors at the Glenugie blockade yesterday but defended police action saying 18 “went too far”.
Yesterday 18 protestors were arrested and 25 charges were laid – mostly for resisting/hindering police and public obstruction.
“This is what the future looks like for Metgasco – potentially they face this at every site they go to,” Lismore author and activist Aidan Ricketts declared. “If they want to do this at every drill site for the rest of the year, they’ve got a very big job ahead of them.”
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The great gas invasion is doomed to fail as communities unite and fight
The Glenugie coal seam gas blockade near Grafton NSW provides the clearest indication yet of what life is going to be like for any gas company that seeks to invade unwilling communities. What has resulted is a successful 48 day long blockade, expensive delays for the industry and an unsustainable allocation of police resources to force access to the site. All of this, and all the gas company has achieved is a single test bore. What the gas company (Metgasco) now faces is a more determined, more experienced and more mobilized region than ever, determined to fight it site by site, community by community and well by well for as long as it takes.