Sydney-based Whitehaven Coal’s first foray into Queensland has revealed how little the repeat environmental offender knows or cares about the north, according to a Lock the Gate Alliance submission in response to the company’s Winchester South proposal.

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.