If you are like me, having witnessed first hand the transformation of a sleepy town into a thriving metropolis, you will no doubt agree that there have been some serious changes to the towns effected by CSG.

Going back just a few years, Miles, a small country town in the Western Downs was a laid back, quite little town of some 800 people.

Appartt from the grey nomads and the B-doubles carrying cattle, not much happened here.

A home style meal in the pub cost just over ten bucks, rents were around $120 per week and the local butcher knew everyone by their first names.

Now, that same meal, albeit a bit more professional, costs about $35, rents are fast approaching $1500 per week and the locals are becoming strangers in their own town.

The cost of block of land has gone from $7500. to $200,000 plus.

In fact, many locals in town, and in similar effected towns are now uprooting as they simply can no longer afford the rents.

So one has to wonder, given that the CSG industry boom being experienced now, is in lue of the infrastructure projects, predicted to continue for about the next six years or so, what will come of these towns once they have gone.

Investors are climbing over themselves to buy new houses up to and beyond half a million, lured by the rental returns, but you have to wonder what they will be worth once the industries infastruture phase is complete, especially if rents return to close to normality.

So, can these towns survive this CSG boom, or, will they become gost towns when the CSG boom is over.

Bet the butcher is doing a roaring trade too.

Get your point though, you'd think there needs to be some sort of reality check on these places via price caps on rent and buying houses. Much of what goes on around these ventures is practically legitimised extortion. But at what point does that head into some sort of nanny state that much of us hate. Thing is, this sort of thing has been going on for hundreds of years and once the gold/ore/oil/guano boom is over like it has happened everywhere in history, the money leaves.

reality check on these places via price caps on rent and buying houses
StG,
Yes, but who do you get to do the checking when Government bureaucrats are the worst offenders ? It really is Catch 22.

The CSG boom and the mining boom and whatever other sort of boom we might be having, are only a boom for some. They are downright bad news for a lot of people.

Yes they change the character of towns enormously. But the third phase – after the boom, doesn’t have to mean abandonment or decrepitude.

I look at towns in my part of the world – Ravenswood, which has great character, after the gold mining boom of the early 1900s left it nearby abandoned. And Greenvale, after the nickel mine closed in 1992, has a totally different type of character.

It is the enormous inequality that our primary resource booms bring that we should be most concerned about, and not be too worried about what happens to towns caught up in the midst of them.

There are no words that convey the disgust with which Australians see the CSG rape and pillage of our land. There are no words that convey the greed and sycophantic compliance from our bastard politicians and self serving public service hierarchy to the energy companies.
Why are the Greens so silent on this issue? I have written my local members both at state and fed level…no response….none. When I have raised this issue previously on OLO some Greens directed me to their web site which has a bit about their opposition to CSG. Whoopty do, a blog, not a word in parliament, not a lock the farm gate protest, no chaining themselves to the machinery of plunder….nothing except a blog. The country is stuffed.
What I find particularly contemptuous is that MANY of those who are employed to lobby our state and fed govt’s on behalf of the energy corporations are ex National Party staffers and members, they are probably still members and further to that not a word from our federal government. CSG wells that do not defile arable land or sit above aquifers are fine, and we have them in abundance all over this vast land mass, but the tyranny of distance makes them a poor return on investment. They had the bloody hide to attempt to drill one in St Peters, they are still lobbying for it. St Peters is 4 kilometers from Sydney Town Hall, 6 Kilometers from the Opera House.

What the hell is going on in this place? Billy Hughes and Bob Menzies would be rolling around in their graves. For as diametrically opposed the boys were in their politics I believe they loved Australia, something I see in the faces of our citizens, but in none of the current crop of bastard politicians, not one little gleam of a hope from any of them.

*The cost of block of land has gone from $7500. to $200,000 plus*

This is what makes no sense to me. One would think that shires
would release a few more housing blocks in these places, for land
is the last thing that they are short of.

Australia will remain a mining country, so IMHO what we need is
a bunch of transportables which can be moved from site to site
every few years, as required, as long as they have a piece of land
to plonk them down on