Coal ? Or Food ?

It is shaping up as being a similar battle to the Franklin dam issue in Tasmania.  That plan to tame a wild river to generate hydro electric power divided the nation and brought the Greens into the political equation as a third force in politics.

Approval has been given for a new coal mine owned by China to be established on the legendary Liverpool Plains, arguably this nation's best and most productive agricultural land in northern New South Wales.   The Shenhua  Watermark Coal mine will occupy thirty-five square kilometres of our best crop land and cost $ 1.7 billion to develop.   It will certainly generate jobs and result in the rejuvenation of many nearby country towns.

The ire that is sticking in the throats of farmers and many city folk across the nation is the issue of deliberately destroying the long term use of prime agricultural land for the short term benefit of jobs and dollars earned to export a mineral that is blamed for global warming and a damaging increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air we breathe.

There is certainly a rich lode of coal under the Liverpool plains, but this mine will consist of three giant open pits and the excavation will create mountains of tailings, and all of that will be just nine hundred metres from the acquifer that makes the Liverpool Plains so productive.    When the mine eventually ceases production, it will leave a wasteland that looks like the surface of the Moon - and will be totally unproductive for agriculture or any other useful purpose.

The Liverpool Plains is known as "black soil " country and is famed for the productivity of it's crops. Many fear that an open cut mine will interfere with the complex water distribution of the acquifer water that makes the land so productive.  Scientists are divided, but it is a step into the unknown and if the opinion proves to be incorrect we will pay a terrible price for approving that mine.

It is not as if coal is a scarce commodity.  It is plentiful in eastern Australia and the main reason the Liverpool Plains have been selected seems to be that it is nice flat land that does not need costly tree clearing - and is adjacent to road and rail to bring it to market.  Establishing a coal mine elsewhere would cost more - and so the bottom line prevails as more important than any possible damage it may do to farming interests.

There is also the bogey of this mine being owned by China.  We are very sensitive to all forms of foreign ownership in Australia and Chinese money pouring in to buy Australian housing has been blamed for locking our first home buyers out of the market.  Conditions are being enforced, limiting purchases to newly constructed homes and freeing up the existing homes market for those locals making their first acquisition.

We seem to have a deep seated notion that we Australians are quite happy to grow things - or mine things - or manufacture things to export and sell to China, but we resent the very idea of another nation having control by buying Australian land or owning a company that dictates the wages paid or the hours worked by our citizens.

Back in the days following the end of the second world war it was clear that America was now the richest nation on the planet and there were howls of protest that America "was buying up Australia ".  It was conveniently forgotten than in the preceding age it was money from Britain and other parts of Europe that was expanding the Australian manufacturing scene, and creating the great buildings that dotted Australian cities.

Just as the Franklin river ideological battle was a turning point in Australian politics, the confrontation over the Shenhua mine looks like developing into an issue that will be decided at the ballot box.   Both the Federal and state governments may stand their ground and the experts who opine that the acquifers will not be damage may be proven right.   The mine may proceed and be successfully developed.

But the politicians have well tuned ears in ascertaining voting intentions and if this creates the groundswell that became apparent over the Franklin issue the self preservation mode will click in and not only will this mine be cancelled,  we may also see a vast change of direction on all issues of foreign ownership in this country.

Now it all depends on the skill of the ecological army of keeping the issue alive and at the forefront of public attention !