NEXT week state Parliament will see the tabling of the report of...

NEXT week state Parliament will see the tabling of the report of the Upper House committee that has been looking at onshore unconventional gas in Victoria — the technical term for a number of extraction practices that are, in common parlance, called fracking.

Actually, Victorians will be getting three reports for the price of one inquiry because the committee can’t agree on what to do about the moratorium currently in place on any activity around onshore gas.
The moratorium, which was put in place months before the last election, would have to come high on any list of reasons not to lament the passing in November last year of the Napthine-Ryan government.
But first, a little history. In August 2012 the Baillieu government placed a ban on fracking in Victoria and on the granting of new coal seam gas exploration licences. The impetus for the ban came from National Party MPs worried about losing their seats to rural independents backed by the likes of the Lock the Gate movement, which is opposed to onshore gas extraction.
A few months later, in January 2013, Baillieu asked former Howard government minister Peter Reith to head a gas market taskforce to look into the issue.
Reith’s report, released by the Napthine government in November that year, warned that if Victoria failed to develop new onshore gas production, we would soon be facing falling gas supplies and rising prices. Reith wanted the removal of the ban on exploration licences for CSG and hydraulic fracking as well as a bunch of other things, all of which proved too much for Denis Napthine. He rejected the report and extended the ban until July this year.