Clearly you have not been listening to the concerns of farmers. CSG is not "enshrined in regulations." One of our farmers' biggest issues is that there is simply no legislation that protects farmers or water - at this moment a CSG company can walk onto a property and begin extraction without even having signed a written agreement. What other business in the world operates like that?

Seems a long bow, perhaps the country air? Amalgamations will not work in the Big Smoke which is the battlefield between the Government and the developers and this logic will hold no water there. There are a few coal gas seam projects there but they are breakfast fodder for city communities. In The Bush, I'll believe they'll accept M&A when the Act is passed. Didn't happen in the past and now all Parties have their roots in council politics, and country towns need a heart. Amalgamations are unnecessary in achieving council reform.

Farmers are not well resourced and have not much in common with the Greens. Disruption and contamination is the problem re gas extraction.
It seems that these concerns are of little consequence. If that is so, why has Halliburton developed a new "clean green" technique to extract gas; http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/hydraulic_fracturing/CleanSuite_Technologies.html
In fact a Halliburton employee I know has told me that at a demo he has "seen a guy eat the fracking fluid". The clean system is apparently operating in Louisiana. It seems sensible to require edible fracking fluid and other minimally harmful applications from all miners that operate in Australia and whoever rises to the surface after the Mergers and Acquisitions cabal is sorted can see to it.

nocsg - try the following, it might make you feel better;

Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979;
Mining Act 1992;
Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997;
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999; and
Water Management Act 2000

Regardless of case by case particulars, CSG does not take place on the surface of the moon and needs to work within the bounds of these pieces of legislation.

No no, reading those Acts will give you a headache, they've been amended so many times that the sense has largely gone, with wide gates for miners and developers to exploit. John Mant's call for 3rd party appeal rights would be an interesting topic for debate.