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Show us your social licence

By Richard Stanton - posted Friday, 9 August 2013


Well, despite every warning, the out-of-control coal seam gas juggernaut rolls on - Alan Jones Radio 2UE August 1

When Australia's conservative radio talkback king Alan Jones stated recently that gas companies do not have a social license to explore for or pump coal seam gas he couldn't have been more right.

Coal seam gas is the methamphetamine of the energy world; It is easy to get hold of, relatively cheap and makes users want more. But it also scares the crap out of a lot of people.

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Like the psychostimulant crystal meth, or ice, coal seam gas, which has been given the demonising initialism CSG, has two values. In low doses it increases energy. In high doses it has the potential to destroy communities.

Coal seam gas and ice are both popular topics. And both suffer at the hands of vocal activists with close attachments to media and other demonising vehicles. But there is one big difference. CSG is legal.

The legality or legislative right of gas companies to do business - to explore for and extract gas from coal seams and other deep underground spaces - has not stopped those who are opposed to the activity from crusading against it on emotional 'social' grounds.

So vehement is the opposition in Australia that one commentator close to the action remarked that the window of opportunity for CSG to become a socially acceptable cheap energy source is closing very quickly.

Oppositional activists are hell bent on stopping forever the exploration for and extraction of CSG in Australia.

Disparate groups have joined forces. Mr Jones is not alone in his demonisation of CSG. He has sided with groups he would normally attack. Additionally, farmers and greenies have gone to bed together on this one. Who would have thought it possible?

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Coal seam gas has ignited passions against it that even the most prescient of energy explorers could not have foreseen.

It is however a legal activity that has legislative approval in the two key states in which the methane is located – Queensland and New South Wales.

Legislative approval gives the operating companies license to explore, drill and pump. They have obtained license through the scrupulous submission of evidence put to the state governments of Barry O'Farrell and Campbell Newman.

What they don't have is what Mr Jones said they don't have – a social license to do what they have legislative approval to do.

Now this is a very tricky calculus. A legislative license is unambiguous. A social license however does not exist in reality.

It is not like a political license. A political license is the granting of the power of governance to a party or parties that hold a majority of votes after an election.

A political license exists and operates in society at the conclusion of a ritual performance that includes a combination of an elector's vote, a ballot paper, candidates for election and the formation of government.

Mr Jones was arguing the gas companies don't have a license that doesn't exist. Tricky.

Gas companies are being told by activist groups to suck up to 'communities' that the activist groups control through powerfully persuasive discourse and rhetoric.

They are being told to come up with a strategy for engagement that may be approved by 'communities' when in reality activist groups have no intention of allowing communities to negotiate or engage.

Very few communities have the necessary information about CSG to make informed decisions. News media too are poorly informed. If media people say it is 'out of control', who counters this claim? The gas companies? Governments? The NSW government is hiding behind the report from the chief scientist.

So how do companies with serious ethical intent go about persuading communities that they are socially acceptable?

Like Bigfoot and Martians there is a body of theory about social license. Maria Doriaof Doria, Jacobina e Gondinho Advogadosdescribes it as relating to the transparency and proactivity of a company towards local stakeholders and society in general, with the aim of increasing stakeholder participation in company decisions.

She says it is about identifying local stakeholders and any negative impact that a company's operations may have on a community so that mitigating measures can be promoted while engagement with the community is fostered.

Here we see shades of the earlier populist catchphrase 'corporate social responsibility' where the emphasis was on the organisation seeking the license to do the hard yards. There was no 'community' input.

Social license, like CSR, assumes the gas company must bare the burden of the research, investigation, engagement and resolution of negative issues for the purposes of keeping communities content.

The conflict that has been manufactured by activists (including politicians and political parties) opposed to CSG assumes all costs associated with the issue will be born by those seeking to profit from its extraction.

This is a burden that is not measurable in financial or social terms.

There are too many questions associated with the idea of social license and not an equivalent number of answers.

It may be that Mr Jones can make the pronouncement that gas companies do not have a social license to extract CSG but it is equally relevant that they do not know how to go about getting one because they don't exist.

The governments that provided the legislative licenses do not know how to nor are they qualified to create and issue social licenses.

Activists like to argue that large projects and infrastructure must be vetted and accepted by communities but this was the reason for the invention of land and environment courts as important additional components of the separation of powers.

Gas companies will never get social licenses to operate coal seam gas wells because they are a metaphorical barrier invented by activists to stop such projects.

The 'independent' report from the NSW chief scientist Mary O'Kane investigating coal seam gas offers nothing on social license to operate.

It lectures the state government on the need to build trust in its capacity to oversee safe CSG extraction.

Indeed there are a number of critical issues surrounding CSG that need immediate resolutions including water, health and land access but these are practical matters – they can be legislated.

The NSW and Queensland governments are showing leadership on these issues but on the matter of social license to operate they're uninformed and incapable.

The activists opposed to CSG are about to lock the window as well as the gate and gas companies and governments have no clue about how to get it open again.

 

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Richard Stanton's latest book, Scorched Earth: The Deep Rupturing of Australian Society And its Failure to Meet the 21st Century is published as an e-book by verandahpress.com



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About the Author

Richard Stanton is a political communication writer and media critic. His most recent book is Do What They Like: The Media In The Australian Election Campaign 2010.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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