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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These government corporations are utterly ruthless.This following story is interesting in relation to land being grabbed by corporate governments.
It is terrible and it must stop.
A New Land Grab In Australia - John Pilger
G’day Von,
I have removed the link. It is either dishonest of you or just a mistake. The link had nothing to do with John Pilger - A new Land Grab in Australia. Instead it was to your 9/11 conspiracy theory site again.
As I said this is either an error on your behalf or just plain deceptive.
Here is what the stuff you linked to was about -
“Attack on Syria by Blackwater because of Secret meeting between Obama and Ahmadinejad”
Quite frankly - Von If you cannot keep your comments relative to the subject - which is in this case in Queensland Australia - then don’t make one.
I think by now the community is well aware of your view of the world through the prism of the 9/11 conspiracy that you espouse. It would not matter if the story was on the benefits of kids drinking goats milk you would throw some anti - Zionist, anti capitalism, anti establishment conspiracy theory on it.
Personally I’ve had enough and I think the community has to.
Your welcome to express your opinion on the relevant topics or associated topics …. but the community (I’ve had a number of email complaints) has had enough of you monopolizing these forums with the same Conspiracy theories.
So its up to you. If you’d like to keep contributing to the community in a constructive relevant manner your most welcome. However if you continue to post that material I will just delete it.
I think you have had a fair enough run. If anybody was interested in reading your stuff I think they know where to find it on your 9/11 conspiracy forum by now. After all you have dozens of links to it from your Agmates comments.
Cheers - Agmates Founder - Steve
[...] and Energy Legislation Amendment Bill) to protect prime farm lands including the Felton Valley, Jimbour Plain, Pittsworth and the Lockyer Valley from being lost to [...]
well - of course it’s public interest to export it now and get export income, because we gotta sell coal now before it is completely out of flavour and we’ve got nothing to export to the world (big toungue in cheek here please note)
no surprise - the QLD govt is also keen to flood ag. land in the mary valley with another ’swamp’ supposedly for providing water to the urban areas. so why not do more silly things?
and we know people up springsure/emerald way, who have good farming practice, even have areas of property under state-recognised ‘nature refuge’ but still the coal mines seem happy to just pay a small fine, pay/force the landholders away and dig a big hole.
of course the govt has an interest in this sort of stuff, and the govt is made up of people from the public, so of course it is therefore public interest (the fact that it’s a specific few ‘public’ that benefit is beside the point it seems…)
heck, if people get cynical with age, and i’m only early thirties… i’m in trouble!!
G’day R.Smith,
That was one of the main points of the article. Due process in Queensland is ‘ordinary’ to say the least.
The governments ad hock approach to due process gives the wider community no confidence at all in their ability to legislate sustainable ag, mining, energy and infastructure in general.
Surely you’d agree that any proposal should first and foremost be subject to a rigorous and independent environmental impact study - even Shale Oil?
Mining or daming huge swaths of productive agricultural land within a 3 hour radius (food mile) of a population of 2 million people should been seen in any light as shot sighted - dumb policy.
I must have done a poor job constructing the article it it conveyed to you and other readers anything else except that I’m advocating -
“sustainable development including agriculture, energy and mining practices.”
Cheers - Your Agmate Steve
CORPORATE BULLY BOYS ON SHOW
I went to a protest meeting last week in Dalby between farmers on the Darling Downs and the public service bureaucrats of Tarong Energy which is owned by the Queensland government and private energy corporations. Representatives of the Santos, Arrow and Link gas and coal corporations were there. The aim of these corporations is to bulldoze out the little farmers off the very fertile Darling Downs so they can drill for coal seam gas and dig an open cut coal mine.
About 100 farmers turned up to hear bureacrats drone on about environmental impact assessment, compensation and rehabilitation for farmers and farmland. Most farmers who are directly affected and will lose their properties were too well behaved but some did put loud questions the temperature rose and we united to put pressure on these corporate dictators on the spot. One man said you can take back our outrage to your political masters.
Corporate private and government executive city bullies in action - I saw today how this ruthless mindset covers up ,ignores and justifys all things even wars in the name of power, greed and profit. The only thing we are lucky in Queensland is that they haven’t got a military onside with the government that would be used to shoot the peasants like as happened in South America and Africa.
I talked to quite a few farmers and we intend to fight hard against this ugly corporate power , one man said he is putting a lock on his gate and the mining companies better not enter his property.
The affluent city corporate executive class have taken off into the stratosphere and can only think of their portfolios and more and more profit. They have no time for food production we can import it they say. They look down their noses at farmers - they don’t want to listen to outspoken farmers.
They want to wreck some of Australia’s best farmland for short term profit selling coal and gas to China.
Farmers are too well behaved and the Corporation plays the DIVIDE and CONQUER game .
My husband was reading the article in the latest Country Life about the farmers at the Dalby protest. I said to him the farmers are too well behaved - if I was one of the farmers in direct line of losing my farm to these bullies I could not have sat through all the 2 hours of speech at the start of the meeting and listened and looked at the maps and graphs concerning the mining of coal seam gas - they know they can bulldoze right over us . We should have all stood up and said this push at mining the Darling Downs is outrageous , immoral and completely wrong and it cannot be justified.
WE ARE TOO SOFT AND EASILY KNOCKED OFF ONE BY ONE - I’m afraid we have been controlled so much by the mainstream media for so long it is very hard for us to change and we stay passive and things get worse.
I agree with your basic premise that mining productive agricultural land is poor policy, especially given that the Govt is only interested in short-term profits. However, there are several issues with the direction of the article:
1. Due process is important, but due process in Queensland via community consultation, the EIS process that you advocate are non-existent in Queensland. The consultation processes are in my experience (and other fatally flawed) are designed to rubber stamp whatever developments the State Government or its’ GOC’s have decided upon - see Traveston Dam, Desalination Plants, Powerlink’s Eumundi transmission line project etc.
2. Suggesting that shale oil and other mining projects should be given the tick and proceed is not in line with your general argument about sustainable practices and in essence says mine somewhere else and leave us alone. This NIMBY approach to state imposed development just makes the issue someone else’s problem and doesn’t garner support in the wider community.
I suggest that you would get more traction and notice from the wider community by maintaining an emphasis on sustainable development including agriculture, energy and mining practices.