Nothing works like getting out there

HEARD from Cath Tanna lately?

Yes, she's got a bit on, running BG Group's multi-billion-dollar coal-seam gas operation in Queensland and sitting on the board of the Reserve Bank.

But she really does need to get out more because her near-invisibility highlights why the CSG industry is losing the public relations battle hands down to an unlikely coalition of farmers, greens and rent-a-crowd protesters who have managed to drown out what should be a good news story for the industry.

In this case, the odd glossy cinema ad won't cut it.

Today's Newspoll, the first to test public sentiment in Queensland on the industry, shows public opinion has turned sharply against CSG development, despite the billions it will inject into the economy and state government coffers, and the equally important payoff in jobs.

This has gone from being a PR headache for the big-end-of-town players in CSG -- British-owned BG, Santos, Shell-PetroChina joint-venture Arrow Energy, and Origin Energy -- to a first-order political issue for government, both at the state and federal level.

Queensland Environment Minister Vicky Darling was on the money when she bluntly told a room full of CSG executives in December that the industry had to do more to help itself, as public opinion turned against it.

The politics will inevitably turn poisonous and the industry has only itself to blame for burning off what Darling called the "community capital" that underpinned its development in Queensland.

The brakes are being applied in NSW under the O'Farrell government and, whoever wins on March 24, it is unlikely that the future Queensland premier will be able to be as full-throated as Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh were in getting CSG off the ground.