Claims that anti-natural gas lobby threatens investment in Australia TOUGH TALK: BG Group Australia's Catherine Tanna. A SMALL group of anti-development activists were threatening thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investment in Australia by the natural gas industry, according to BG Group Australia chairman Catherine Tanna. In an address in Brisbane Ms Tanna said many of the criticisms of the industry were "highly questionable and propagated without challenge to the point where activism was determining public policy." She also told the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia audience that leadership was lacking nationally and the increasing amount of regulation was stifling business. Ms Tanna said yesterday a prime example was the proposed amendments to the Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, introduced in haste to Parliament in March this year. The proposals aim to broaden the Act to make water resources a matter of national environmental significance and to make just two industries - coal and natural gas - subject to the new law when they have a relatively small impact on Australia's water. Coal and natural gas use less than 4 per cent of Australia's water whereas agriculture uses more than 50 per cent. Ms Tanna said the proposals were not introduced to deal with an environmental problem but to appease activists. "We believe the proposals are fundamentally flawed because they deal with a fabricated perception and not with reality, and will effectively shift the regulatory goalposts for projects already approved by a regulatory regime that already works," she said. OPPOSED: Landowners and protesters at Nangwee, near Cecil Plains on the Darling Downs, declare their opposition to gas mining. Picture: Phil Norrish Ms Tanna said about 9000 jobs had been created in Australia by BG subsidiary QGC's Queensland Curtis LNG Project alone and two other natural gas projects in Queensland have similar numbers. "When fully operational, our business will contribute more than $1 billion a year to state and federal government revenues," she said. That's equivalent yearly funding for more than 20 primary schools or about 1000 hospital beds. That is a measure of what is at stake when we have decision-making on this basis; when green activists and their supporters deliberately misinform; and when motives and charges go unquestioned and unchallenged. Turning to the potential sale of State Government assets in Queensland, particularly the ports, Ms Tanna said any sale should be considered on its merits. "The Queensland Budget needs to be back in the black," she said. However she said any assets sales must be done based on whether or not it was in the national interests and whether the government-owned corporation or organisation could be run more effectively in the private sector.