NSW Farmers Association, Media Release, 26 November 2025

Australia’s largest state farming organisation has engaged senior legal counsel as it ramps up opposition to the controversial Narrabri Gas Project.

NSW Farmers Acting CEO Mike Guerin – who led a successful legal challenge against the federal government and mining giant Glencore in Queensland – said he was “getting the band back together” to fight Santos’ Narrabri Gas Project.

“NSW Farmers has engaged the same senior legal counsel we used to defeat the federal government and Glencore a couple of years ago, and we are actively exploring the best way to defend Australia’s precious groundwater from mining giants,” Mr Guerin said.

“The people who depend on the Great Artesian Basin for their water are living in fear that this project will go ahead and go wrong, like many of them do, creating tens of thousands of water refugees and forcing farmers to abandon half the continent because it’s been contaminated forever.

“I’m happy to be getting the band back together on this one, because the risks with the Narrabri Gas Project are simply far too great to let it proceed.”

In 2024 Mr Guerin was CEO at Queensland farm organisation AgForce when it defeated the Australian Government and Glencore in a Federal Court case over a proposal to inject carbon dioxide into the Great Artesian Basin. One of the key pieces of evidence was an expert independent hydrologist’s report, which found high risks of contaminating groundwater with high levels of arsenic and lead.

Mr Guerin called it a watershed moment for protection of vital groundwater, which was the only reliable source of clean water for almost half the nation.

“It’s a sad reality that governments, politicians and mining giants seem to be deaf to these genuine and real concerns about protecting this critical water source,” Mr Guerin said.

“They don’t appear to care about the environment or the communities that will be impacted or the billions of dollars’ worth of food that won’t be grown because of contamination.

“This is why organisations like NSW Farmers are here, to hold decision makers to account and make them do the right thing.”