In what can only be described as an outrageous act of nepotism the Queensland government has granted its own State owned Tarong Power a mining development licence over 13,000 hectares (32,123 acres) of prime privately owned Darling Downs Agricultural land.
The area know as Haystack near the town of Dalby is farmed in an environmentally sustainable way and has won national Landcare awards for the work done in the area to promote ecologically friendly farming practices.
Haystack land holders and residents have formed a group called coal4breakfast to fight the development (see video below).
Based on recent events the fact that the development is not in a safe or marginal Labor seat means that they have bugger all sway with Labor or Mines and Energy Minister Geoff Wilson [pictured].
Just this week Labor used its numbers in the QLD single chamber parliament to introduced several amendments to the Mineral Resources Act. The changes now give extraordinary discretionary powers to the Mines and Energy Minister.
Specifically, the amendments will give the Minister the power to refuse to grant or to revoke a mining or exploration tenement if the Minister considers it is not in the “public interest”.
Agmates question to the Minister is how can the Haystack decision be in the public interest?
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1. The Haystack deposits will last just 25 years.
2. Tarong have stated that they don’t need the coal to fire its power station. In fact Tarong have no intention of mining Haystack coal themselves. They are reviewing the asset with the intention to sell the Mineral Development Licence to another company. Tarong Energy representative stated the Haystack coal deposit is export quality coal and is likely to be exported.
3. Landholders from the Haystack Plain are world leaders in the adoption of conservation farming practices. Their country is farmed in an environmentally sustainable manner. They have received national recognition through Landcare awards for their work to adopt ecologically friendly farming practices.
4. Twenty five years of mining coal for export will take 32,000 ares of some of the best Agricultural food producing land out of production for 1,000 years. That land is just 2 hours from the centre of Brisbane. How is that in the public interest?
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There is no way that Labor or minister Wilson could ever justify the mining of Haystack is in ‘the public interest’. In fact everything about it is to the immediate short -- term detriment of the public interest.
But that will not stop the ‘cowboy culture’ that governs how Labor is ruling Queensland. Take for example a survey from the independent Canadian research group the Fraser Institute:
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“which ranks Queensland behind all other Australian states, and even countries such as Botswana and Peru, when it comes to the “attractiveness” of government policy.
The poor ranking is based on a thing called ’sovereign risk’. That is usually associated with operating in countries such as Zimbabwe -- where governments use its executive powers in a unilateral fashion that can often have scant regard for due process.”
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Here’s the Bligh governments track record for decisions made without due process in just the last couple of months and since the Fraser report was released.
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1. Hiked the Coal excise -- reaping an extra $600 million in taxes for the Brigalow Corporation from existing Coal mines. This was announced in the State Budget with zero consultation or warning.
2. Killed the Shale Oil industry by placing an ‘out of the blue’ 20 year moratorium on Shale oil mining. There had not even been an Environmental impact study done.The announcement of moratorium by Premier Anna Bligh without an Environment impact study being done can be seen as nothing more than an attempt to win political support in Marginal State Seat of Proserpine were residents had rallied against the development of a shale oil mine.
3. Next came Bligh’s decision to reject proposals to ship about 35 million tonnes of coal a year through the Mackay port -- Mackay also happens to be in the state seat of Whitsunday.
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Queenslanders are fed up with the self serving, crisis dogged labor government. Any government that abandons the ‘due process’ for transparent self benefit by proxy places itself on the ‘endangered species’ list.
Premier Anna Bligh [pictured] & Mines and Energy Geoff Wilson can’t seem to understand that preserving a whopping 32,000 acres of our prime food producing land which all importantly lies within just 3 hours road travel from the state capital Brisbane and 2 million Queenslanders is a high priority matter of ‘public interest’.
Preserving that food production is 1000 times more important that allowing it to be open cut mined and then exported to China.
There is a state election due in Queensland within 12 months. If Bligh/Wilson persist in destroying our ability as a state to feed ourselves in an environmentally sustainable fashion then the voters of QLD, city and country alike will launch them into the new careers they deserve -- outside of State Politics.
Messers Bligh and Wilson, how about actually acting in the ‘public interest’ and revoking this crazy mining lease. That would be acting in the ‘public interest’, which would be a nice change from acting in your own party political self serving fashion that you have demonstrated so frequently in the recent past.
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( thanks to Agmate Beth for the tip off and the YouTube video)
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