As I understand it, a 'social licence' (whatever you choose that to mean) was granted at the last state and federal elections. Is that 'considerable public concern' the same concern that 'global warming is the greatest moral challenge of our time' whereby the issue was ranked 18th out of 20 issues in numerous polls?
The completely debunked film 'gas world' undermines your argument surely.
If you dispute the 'science' presentations in community forums, surely you would present arguments refuting the science presented in those fora?
Your outrage at Buru Energy presenting their 'side of the story' at community fora is confected, given the campaigns mounted by those who object to the proposal, aren't you also outraged by those? Community forums are a mechanism whereby public consulted and communicated may occur.

Prompete;
These were the same protesters, promising catastrophe, as Bass Straight was being drilled for essential oil.
It was all doom and gloom and an environmental disaster of monumental proportions, for the marine environment, which would be devastated!
The actual outcomes couldn't be more different, with brand new habitat created for all manner of marine life!
These people have cried wolf too many times, to be taken seriously.
They talked the government out of an oil industry off our northeast coat, cause there was a reef there.
The reef is in far more danger from the super tankers, this stupidity, has now forced to ply the same waters.
Instead of the promised tourists, tourist companies are going bankrupt; and with disastrous consequences for the environment.
Someone made a film about gas in water.
Hell, I wish they'd put some in mine!
I mean, it' virtual child's play to extract!
If one simply discounts the endless false alarms, one might find, we're not in the dire straights these same people always bang on about?
And given the gas is used in locally invented, ceramic fuel cells, the exhaust product is mostly water vapor.
That said, there are literally dozens of places, where methane bubbles uncontrolled as millions of cubic metres, per day, from myriad areas, from the edges of Continental shelves, various geological ruptures and landfill.
It seems passing strange that these sources of methane gas is allowed to escape, to harm the environment, while some foreign company, trys to get a foothold in the remote Kimberly?
And this because we just didn't have the wit to keep our own oil and gas corporation, in the mad hatters rush to privatize the fuel industry.
Privatization takes the wealth of the people, for peanuts, and then redirects it to the better off, with the first result, the taxpayer then needs to make good the lost revenue.
Rhrosty

‘morning Wade,

I’m amused by the dated rhetoric you still hold dear. There seems to be a complete absence of reality in your pontifications and I think it’s high time someone yanked hard on your reins.

You say << a new extractive industry – particularly one as large, unproven and controversial as fracking >>.

New? Unproven? Fracking has been used since 1949 and is now one of the key energy sources in the USA. In addition, much of the rest of the world is pressing ahead with this extraction technology, in particular Eastern Europe, Britain and the EU with many more nations to follow.

Just in case your cloistered world of nonsense has blocked your ability to follow recent events, I’ve included news items from just the last few months.

Britain Wins Shale Battle As EU Leaves Fracking Out Of Stricter Environment Laws - Reuters, 21 December 2013

EU Gives Go-Ahead For Fracking After Brussels Vows No New Regulations - The Times, 21 December 2013

Background: How Britain Won The Battle For European Shale - The Daily Telegraph, 15 December 2013

You referred to the “loss of social license”. This concept has been developed over many years to allow local stakeholders to have a voice in development applications. That is until this concept was highjacked by well funded protest NGO’s.

In today’s world of ideological politics and activism, the social license as primarily a community instrument, has been lost to local interests to the protest industry. As evidence I cite that the Australian Conservation Foundation now has Wade Freeman as “Kimberley Project Officer” I rest my case.

Such is the power and funding of the international protest industry that India has now declared Greenpeace “threat to national economic security” and engaging in “massive efforts to take down India’s coal-fired power projects and mining activity.”

Cont’d

Cont’d

Some 97% of protest activity in India is funded from overseas and the Indian Reserve Bank will now block this funding. Greenpeace operates this “protest industry” in 40 countries and is largely funded by the EU.

Intelligence Agency Calls On Indian Government To Curb Greenpeace Funding - Indian Express, 19 June 2014

Enemy Of The Poor: Greenpeace Fighting Filipino Farmers Over Biotechnology - Manila Standard Today, 19 June 2014

Crackdown: India Curbs Greenpeace Funding - The Hindu, 19 June 2014

Likewise Australia’s protest industry is well funded, much of it from taxpayers. Activists such as you are able to use this funding to usurp local community interests and run amok with protests and more importantly, burning public resources with “appeals”.

It is no surprise therefore, that the WA’s EPA has been bombed with no less that 48 appeals on just one project. Congratulations.

Public funding of activist NGO’s under the ALP looks like this;

The Australian Conservation Foundation $2.9m
The Wilderness Society $125,000
Environment Victoria $4.0m
Total Environment Centre $450,000
Environmental Defenders $1.2m
Conservation Councils, VIC.QLD and W.A Grants under GVEHO schemes, $$?
Friends of the Earth $65,000

The world community is beginning to see the environmental protest industry as a social pariah, a product of social democracy’s alarmism and an impediment to progress for even the worlds poorest.

You may think the false assertions you lead with in this article are true, but they aren’t are they ? As evidenced they are just unmitigated bull.

In Australia the funding of activist NGO’s and much of the environmental research upon which you depend will soon dry up. It won’t be long before you are again rattling “donation tins” in shopping centre’s.

Personally I would prefer a harsher penalty, like a custodial sentence for fraud.