Deputy Chair for the Hunter Valley Protection Alliance Graeme Gibson said it might as well just be a committee as any community consultation has already been ignored.

Mr Gibson said the announcement, which his alliance was only notified of when The Singleton Argus notified him of it, does not include a representative from Singleton Council.

He said that is a ‘gross oversight’ by the minister for Primary Industries Steve Whan.

“Singleton Council is the body that represents the concerns of the wider community,” he said.

“There is a council representative on all other CCC’s in the area,” he said.

When the Bulga Gas Committee was dissolved last year, Mr Gibson said the alliance was devastated.

“We had started to get good dialogue with AGL,” he said of the former Bulga Gas Committee.

“We had success with our water study and then our only source of dialogue was taken away from us.

“There was a fear that we were going to get sidelined all together.”

Mr Gibson said the appointment of Margaret Macdonald-Hill as the chairperson appears to be a good choice.

The relationship between the alliance and the previous chair Pam Allen was good and Mr Gibson said he anticipates Margaret to be a good and fair independent chairperson.

There are a number of outstanding issues the alliance has with AGL’s project including the mapping of buffer zones.

“There is actually very little area in Broke/Bulga available to them,” Mr Gibson said.

Mr Gibson said AGL still have to ad to the map areas of virtue by topography and areas of their petroleum exploration licence.

Minister Whan announced that the CCC will now include six community representatives from a broad range of areas such as chambers of commerce, community action groups, local Indigenous communities, major land users group or association, local water users associations, and tourism associations.

Mr Gibson said he now hopes the new chair can select the representatives as soon as possible to ensure a reconnection with dialogue between AGL and the community occurs.

•Conflict over NSW Coal and Gas Strategy - page 2