Inquiry chairperson Rachel Pepper addresses last night’s forum.
COMMENT by ERWIN CHLANDA
Last night was the town’s last opportunity to have a say, face to face, to the fracking inquiry, and I went to the Convention Centre at 5pm to hear what the locals had to say.
Two hours and 15 minutes later the inquiry head, Rachel Pepper, and members of the panel were still addressing the crowd, barely more numerous than the panel and the inquiry staff in the cavernous room.
Justice Pepper had made it clear that the community members would get their say at the end of the meeting.
What she also made clear, right at the start of this “community forum”, that no-one – including media – was permitted to film or audio record the meeting.
She said she was making that ruling so that people were more inclined to speak freely, not afraid that, for example, their employers would put them under pressure for their views on fracking (an astonishing assumption in itself in our supposed democratic society).
How that would work was not clear as speakers could be identified by still photographs, and from news reports relying on notes taken by journalists.
For the benefit of anyone contemplating planting a mobile phone in record mode, Judge Pepper even invoked the “optical surveillance act,” possibly referring to the NT Surveillance Devices Act 2007 which provides for penalties of imprisonment up to two years.
I didn’t stay. I don’t take instructions from anyone about how to cover meetings that are supposedly public. I have covered thousands of them, and this is how they work: Speakers get the microphone, they make their point, everyone in the room can hear them, as well as the answers given.
I usually audio record the process as the most accurate form of note-taking, sometimes shooting a video with audio to illustrate the story with an embedded clip – as we did with one of the inquiry’s earlier public meeting in Alice Springs.
Locals at the meeting I spoke to this morning say this isn’t how it happened last night.
We’re the local forum of choice for civilised debate about fracking. In addition to our reports we’ve published hundreds of readers’ comments and letters to the editor on the subject. Stand by for more.
The panel is yet to declare any and all conflicts of interest it has and it should have also asked the same from those that submitted to them, including and not limited to consultants that they used.
Without said conflicts of interests declared, the final fracking inquiry submission cannot be considered a submission by the panel without compromise. Without prejudice.
You should have stayed on Erwin, as trying as that might have been.
Justice Pepper is reported as having rejected the claims that Origin had misled the Inquiry, and expressed the panel’s concern that Lock The Gate had not fully withdrawn and apologised for its evidence in Darwin.
That would have balanced your reporting.
@ Bob Beadman: Hi Bob, I requested a comment from the inquiry at the time of posting the report. I spent about an hour with its media manager during the forum on Thursday, discussing the inquiry’s response, point for point. He said he would email me the response once he had checked it with Judge Pepper that evening. I am still waiting for that email.
Kind regards, Erwin Chlanda , Editor.