Australian acting star Michael Caton will be the voice of a new advertising blitz Lock the Gate Alliance is launching this week, which highlights the harm that polluting gasfields are causing across Australia.

Hot on the heels of a Senate Inquiry into its murky taxpayer grants for fracking in the Northern Territory, the Morrison Government is now shifting its wasteful spending spree to Queensland’s Bowen and Galilee basins.

Lock the Gate Alliance has described the Morrison Government’s latest attempt to use a fracking-industry influenced report to foist unconventional gas on farmers and communities across the country as like putting a filter on a cigarette and saying it’s safe.

Local farmers have reacted with disbelief to Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley’s approval of Whitehaven’s polluting Vickery Coal Mine this morning despite her unresolved Federal Court appeal challenging a finding that she owes Australian children a duty of care to consider climate change harms.

Bylong Valley locals and Lock the Gate Alliance say the NSW Berejiklian Government must facilitate the buy back of land KEPCO wanted to turn into a coal mine, after the company suffered yet another embarrassing defeat before the courts.