He asked representatives of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, including former Santos vice-president Rick Wilkinson: "You are giving landholders $10 million to $15 million a year [in compensation] while you are collecting $8.5 billion a year. You would have to say that's a pretty good deal, right?"

Although there are countless protests about gas miners' impact on prime farming land and water tables, Senator Joyce's question brought the elephant into what was an already packed room, reports The Australian Financial Review .

In Australia, where miners have the right to walk on to a property and take out what they like from the ground, compensation packages are relatively frugal.

Texas land owners in the US control the subsurface and, as such, control much bigger cuts of the exploited resources.

Some critics hope for a moratorium on CSG projects until environmental effects are better understood.

But that is unlikely to happen where governments estimate the gas industry based in just one region such as Gladstone could generate 18,000 jobs and up to $850 million a year in royalties.

Cotton Australia's Michael Murray revealed in the Senate inquiry that specific requests from the federal Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Tony Burke, to protect the Condamine Alluvium were knocked back by the Queensland government.

He said that the requests by the minister were amendments of an environmental impact statement provided by a gas company seeking to start exploration in the area.