Miners stand up to Lock the Gate’s campaign against mining jobs
Sometimes we have to draw a line in the sand to stand up for mining jobs, especially when it comes to extreme activist groups like Lock the Gate.
Lock the Gate was originally formed as a ‘community group’ apparently to fight for the rights of farmers. However in recent years the group has abandoned rural communities and become a radical anti-mining outfit focused on destroying mining jobs.
Recently, Lock the Gate hosted some of their activist supporters from Sydney on a bus tour of the Hunter Valley so they could ‘peer-and-sneer’ at local mines, and the people who work there.
These Hunter mines provide thousands of jobs for the local community, spend millions of dollars every year with local businesses and deliver millions to the state in royalties that help pay for roads, hospitals, schools and emergency services.
Lock the Gate wants them shut.
The names of some of the tour attendees were published on Lock the Gate’s website. They included a contributor to Green Left Weekly, a former Greens state candidate, an academic, and a former ABC journalist who also moonlights at events for ‘Rising Tide’- another activist group that regularly chains themselves to trains, blocks rail lines, and puts kids in kayaks to try to blockade coal ships.
The activist-tourists did not meet with hard-working local miners, or anyone working in the hundreds of businesses in the region who supply the mines. However they did enjoy a fancy lunch at a local winery so they could sip on Hunter Semillon before driving back to Sydney.
Lock the Gate’s obsession with killing off mining jobs in our regions is becoming worse. The group’s own website shows they are actively campaigning against the jobs of over 10,000 miners across NSW. This is around forty percent of the entire coal-mining workforce in NSW.
It’s why every mine worker, every supply business and everyone who knows the importance of mining to our communities should continue to stand up to radical activist groups like Lock the Gate.
Stephen Galilee
CEO NSW Minerals Council
