NSW Greens to Protect Agricultural Land from Coal Mines

New South Wales Greens MP and mining spokesperson Lee Rhiannon has introduced a new bill to the NSW parliament to protect prime agricultural land and water from damage cause by coal mining and exploration. The introduction of the Mining (Safeguarding Agricultural Land and Water From Mining) Amendment Bill paves the way for similar legislation in Queensland.

Only two pages long, the bill proposes to amend the Mining Act 1992 to protect prime agricultural land (and water sources that feed prime agricultural land) from mining operations. Under the amendments, any exploration licence, assessment lease or mining lease would not be granted over Class 1 or 2 productive land, and planning approvals under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (such as development consents or project approvals) could not be given for the purposes of mining. It also proposes that the Director-General of the NSW Department of Primary Industries will be required to identify and publicly disclose land that is protected from mining.

In introducing the bill before the Parliament last week, Lee Rhiannon explained the assumptions on which the need for such protection of prime agricultural land is based: 

The bill relies on three simple premises: first, that the world is facing the prospect of increasing food insecurity—a chorus of climate change scientists have predicted diminishing average harvests around the world due to higher temperatures, longer and deeper droughts, more intense bushfires, reduced water availability and more extreme weather events; second, that high-quality farming land is a finite, limited and precious resource; and, third, that mining is increasingly encroaching upon and threatening the most productive food-producing land in New South Wales. (read the rest of the speech here...) 

This is, of course, no less true of Queensland, where prime farming land in the Felton Valley and Haystack Plains face similar threats from the continuing expansion of the coal industry. Rhiannon acknowledged the similarities to the Queensland situation, quoting Geoff Hewitt from the Queensland FutureFood campaign launch: 

As Geoff Hewitt, a third-generation farmer from Queensland, said earlier this year at the launch of the Queensland group FutureFood:

It defies logic that a farm capable of producing premium food for thousands of years into the future would be permanently destroyed to allow for 20 years of coalmining.

That is a very sobering statement. We are talking about the potential of much of our farming land being irreparably damaged for thousands of years by a couple of decades of coalmining; that is really worth contemplating.

The Bill recieved front page coverage in the Naomi Valley Independant newspaper today. It now remains to be seen how the major parties, particularly the National and Liberal parties, respond to the amendments in the debate in the Parliament.

Related Stories: 

• Could Queensland introduce similar legislation?