Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, has put his name to possibly the most blatant piece of hypocrisy in the country by writing an introduction to an lift-out into Gladstone's local newspaper.

The lift-out is entitled "Reef Guardians" and Mr Burke talks about all the wonderful things the federal government is doing on the Great Barrier Reef overlooking the fact that it was his approval of the massive construction in Gladstone harbour, especially the dredging to allow LNG tankers into the port, that is undoubtedly one of the prime causes of the current threats to the environment.

Mr Burke also approved the dumping of toxic spoil in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and World Heritage Area.

Lock the Gate Alliance presdient Drew Hutton said Mr Burke will not be allowed to spin his way out of his responsibility for what is happening to this precious area.

The Lock the Gate Alliance says the ultimate worth of the worth of the Bligh government's strategic cropping land legislation being introduced into the parliament today will be measured by how many coal mines it stops from alienating good farm land.

President of the Lock the Gate Alliance, Drew Hutton, said the Bligh government was claiming it would protect 4 percent of the state but this was sheer spin and it was unlikely that more than 1 percent would be protected because the criteria for what constituted "strategic cropping land" were too restricted and because it won't stop coal seam gas development on this land.

"While mining in about 4 percent of the state might potentially trigger this legislation, criteria like a maximum 4 percent slope rules out much valuable land.

Today's decision by TRUenergy to invest in the building of two gas-fired power stations in Queensland will do very little to reduce Queensland's soaring greenhouse gas emissions.

Lock the Gate Alliance president Drew Hutton said the evidence was mounting that coal seam gas has a carbon footprint that perhaps equals coal.

"Research done in both the US and Australia indicates that, when you go beyond just burning the gas in a power station and factor in as well, the energy requirements for producing the gas, the tree clearing involved and the fugitive emissions at all stages of the production process, coal seam gas produces an awful lot of carbon dioxide," Mr Hutton said.

The Lock The Gate Alliance claims that the Murray Darling Basin will be another casualty as Precautionary Principle is thrown to the wind in the resources boom.

Lock the Gate President, Drew Hutton says pressure from States addicted to mining royalties is most likely to be behind the MDBA's plan to allow massive increases in groundwater use in the forth-coming Murray Darling Basin Plan.

The MDBA's current thinking on sustainable diversion limits for groundwater in the proposed Basin Plan are almost 2,000GL greater than those stated in last year's Guide to the Basin Plan.

The president of the Lock the Gate Alliance, Drew Hutton, today apologised for accidentally using the wrong terminology in the Alliance's submissions to the NSW upper house inquiry and the federal Senate inquiry into coal seam gas but re-affirmed his belief that the coal seam gas industry was deliberately misleading the public by claiming shale gas has nothing to do with coal seam gas.

"The Lock the Gate submission used 'coal seam gas' instead of the wider term 'unconventional gas' but there is not a world of difference between the two types, as the industry claims," Mr Hutton said.