…but will he be able to get away with it, as community opposition continues to gain momentum? With two bills to be introduced into federal parliament this week seeking to tighten regulation of how the CSG industry operates, plus an ongoing Senate inquiry and an impending state level inquiry into impacts of CSG, and calls from both the community and The Greens for a moratorium, can Barry O’Farrell really continue Labor’s CSG licence approval spree?
NSW Minister for Energy and Resources Chris Hartcher opened last week’s government sponsored $900-a-head mining industry conference and he was firm in his assurances to the attending mining executives that the BOF government still loves mining. However with Queensland’s recent announcement of exclusion zones around cities populated with over 1000 people, the BOF government is under pressure to follow suit, which may come with the strategic land use study currently under way which is said to set-out which areas are appropriate for mining, and those that are not (such as prime agricultural land, one would expect).
As approvals stall in the interim, here are some highlights from what Hartcher told mining conference delegates on Thursday 18 August (emphasis my own):
I acknowledge – and the O’Farrell Government acknowledges – that there are many legitimate concerns held in the community, by responsible sections of the community, about the future of mineral exploration and development in NSW. Those concerns are about our water, those concerns are about our environment and those concerns are about our farmland. But we need to address them and we need to work them through. We need to work them through accepting a fundamental premise that mining is at the very heart of the economy of this State. [...]
…While we expect in a democratic society debate to take place on each issue that confronts that society, one would hope that the debate about minerals would be conducted within the parameters of rationality rather than irrationality.
…The debate needs to be therefore set on a national basis, on a proper understanding of ownership and within a proper framework of the respect for our water, our farmland and our environment. We all know we’re on the driest of all continents, we all know water is a constant challenge and there is not a single person who is responsible who does not believe it’s of paramount importance that we protect our water. Nor is there anyone now in our society who thinks you can just spoil the environment.
Once again, there are sections of the community that refuse to acknowledge that that debate too has moved on. The way mining areas are rehabilitated – I saw one recently out in mid-western NSW which had been mined, rehabilitated and is now absolutely indistinguishable from the surrounding unmined landscape.
…The importance of our farmland and the importance of our water protection is a debate that must be had and will be had and which the NSW Government will certainly participate in. But we do appeal to everybody to approach it with an atmosphere of rationality.
So much emphasis on rational and irrational debate, as Drew Hutton recently noted, if this debate were about rationality, it would’ve ended, and Lock the Gate would’ve won, a long time ago.
Hartcher continued with his pro-mining spiel. In a time when we are more aware than ever before of the damage being done to our environment as a result of coal mining, the Minister also saw it fit to express his excitement about increased production:
…the fact that NSW is now the second largest coal producer in Australia is a great step forward.
And the future looks so bright, foreign investment, more mining!
…NSW does have a great minerals future; there are great opportunities for NSW. I think they’re exciting, I think they’re well-worth the investment. I know in my own office I have a continued parade of visitors from overseas… all anxious to find out what mineral opportunities there are in NSW and all anxious to play a part in their development.
Read (pdf) a partial transcript of the Minister’s speech here.
The liberal party cares only for big business; those with money, those with power.
The O’Farrell Coalition has no ADMINISTRATIVE choice but to return to the basics of the Constitutional fundamentals or his new government itself will perish, sooner rather than later. No Government can govern outside the LAW; no government is above the people; Nor is ANY GOVERNMENT, a law unto itself. A government will obey its own LAWS or it will suffer the consequences.
We landowners of the freehold, will no longer tolerate the perpetuated mischief of Labors Local Environmental Planning (LEP) directives; nor will we suscribe to the idiotic ideologies in the commonly suspended planning evils (LEP overlays) of some hovering, environmental mirage, now opaquely balanced over the landuse planning and global experiments for some conceptual New World.
Our Nation’s democracy, and the associated self-determining freedoms, delivered over the centuries from the ownership of the fee simple (being a system of a lawful landuse attached to LANDOWNERSHIP) and providing us – from the primary LAND use of these comparatively few private risk-stakeholder-investments amounting to (about 15%) has given this Nation a social and economic prosperity, which is the envy of the world.
It’s called “riding the sheep’s backs” where the SHEEP of today are nonetheless transformed into FREEHOLD LAND.
The benefits which have been acquired, accrued and accredited to the LANDOWNER through our Local Government Authority (in the Constitutionally FEDERATED system of GOVERNMENTS) — are the direct consequence of an historical and inherent fee simple landrights-principle purposively underwriting (at the insistence of our FOUNDING COLONY pastoralist FATHERS) this FEDERATED system which without a definitive hierarchy.
Without FREEHOLD there is no DEMOCRACY and without FREEHOLD no FREEDOM.
The freehold LAW is the oldest LAW of any jurisdiction known to Man.
Once that FREEHOLD landright is destroyed (as now) we are away from the conscionable and responsible privileges of the self-determing capitalist regime; and rapidly progressing towards the regulated tenets of fascism; communism; dictatorship; autocracy and/or totalatarianism …. each of which has miserably failed the world; yet are ugly regimes which all contemporary governments now seem determined to foster through a determined and repugnant RURAL NATIONALISATION of land:
ie the unconstitutional LAND REGULATIONS now superimposed over existing contractual landuse agreements (ie the Native Vegetation Acts; Mining Trespass through physical invasion; Riparian Right repeals etc etc ) with alternative, inventive interpretations for what a global LAW today is contrived, and perceived to be, in the perpetrated propaganda of whichever PARLIAMENT of the day.
As our Nation stands at this moment, we the people, who came together in 1900 are as equally determined as any 4 year term government to perpetuate this freehold landrights’ ” ism” in order to re-cement our foundations. If necessary we will fight to retain that right in order that DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM are maintained. We owe those rights to our kids and we will let no government destroy them.
Our Property Rights extend to the full volumetric measurement of our DEPOSITED PLAN. It has been reasoned and Constitutionally accepted that if we lawfully own the LAND – we lawfully own all the “corporeal and incorporeal hereditaments” attached to and forming part of whichever CROWN SEALED and CROWN REGISTERED deposited “parcel” [DP] of LAND.
Unless any corporeal or incorporeal hereditament was FORMALLY reserved to the CROWN at the time of the aleinations of wastelands into the fee simple and is shown to be “reserved to the Crown in written documentaiton on the DEED of Entitltment” then the CROWN is entitled to take NOTHING form the LAND – unless it “acquires and resumes” according to the Statutory Complying Proceedures and PAYS THE LANDOWNER JUST TERMS COMPENSATION FOR THE LOSS OF A LAWFULLY ACQUIRED LANDRIGHT’S AMMENITY.