Aidan Ricketts is a lecturer at the School of Law and Justice at SCU where his research and teaching specialisation is in the area of community activism and public interest advocacy. He is the author of the recently released Activists Handbook and a prominent activism trainer.
A question that is constantly being asked recently is 'What is the significance of putting up 'Lock the Gate' signs or declaring our communities 'Gasfield Free'? The simple answer to this is that the Lock the Gate strategy is a very powerful form of resistance to mining companies and the Gasfield Free Community Strategy even more so, but first let's look into the more precise legal and political questions involved.
Ask a lawyer if locking the gate will make it impossible for mining companies to access your land and they will most likely give you a technical answer that goes something like this.
Locking the gate and refusing access can keep mining companies out for a while but they do have special rights granted under the relevant legislation to force a landowner to arbitration and ultimately to court to effectively force access. At first blush this is pretty disturbing information and can cause many people to feel as though resistance is useless, but resistance is not useless - it is very powerful and here is why.
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Northern Rivers Echo
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