Culture

The Government Sneakily Approved A Coalmine On Prime Farmland And It’s Backfiring Massively

Barnaby Joyce could be in real trouble. Worse than the threatening-to-kill-Johnny-Depp's-dogs kind of trouble, even.

by Alex McKinnon  9 July 2015
barnaby joyce

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

A favourite tactic of any government is to release unpleasant, embarrassing or inconvenient information on a day when everyone’s attention is likely to be elsewhere. Press releases from governments announcing nasty things have a strange tendency to get sent out at ten to five on a Friday afternoon, but the practice is often far more blatant than that — the former NSW Labor government released damning documents revealing corruption on the morning of the Melbourne Cup back in 2005, while the federal government was heavily criticised last year for pushing through with the release of its controversial mid-year economic forecast while the Sydney siege was going on.

Which seemingly made Bill Shorten’s two-day appearance before the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption — which has caught the attention of Australia’s media so totally newspapers are reading into how many sips of water Shorten is taking on the stand — the perfect time for the government to quietly announce that it’s greenlit a whopping new coal mine in western New South Wales. Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s approval for the open-cut mine southwest of Gunnedah was announced yesterday morning, at roughly the same time many of the nation’s premier journalists were going wild over one reporter at the Royal Commission sticking a funny note on another reporter’s back and tweeting about it.

Untitled

Who wore it better? DON’T ANSWER THAT, IT’S A TRICK.

That isn’t just any old coal mine, either; this thing is going to be built in the middle of the Liverpool Plains which, contrary to popular belief, are not the paradisal fields where all the Beatles will be eternally reunited in the afterlife. Rather, it’s an immense region of western NSW that’s commonly regarded as being one of the best farming regions in the world; the only soil more fertile for growing crops can be found in the Ukraine, and they’re a little busy playing host to half the Russian military to do much farming at the moment.

The proposed mine is huge, about 35 square kilometres in total, but what has people more worried is the fact that it could threaten the water table that makes the Liverpool Plains such an ideal place to grow crops. Farmers and other locals have been fighting hard against the mine for a long time, and it seemed as though the politicians who usually represent rural areas like the Plains were getting the message; Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has previously described the Shenhua mine as “anathema” to locals, and NSW Premier Mike Baird said he didn’t support mining in the area in the run-up to the March state election.

But yesterday’s announcement seems to have rendered those assurances moot, and despite coming in the middle of a Royal Commission grilling the Opposition Leader, it hasn’t gone unnoticed; farming organisations, rural media outlets and politicians have given furious responses to the news and vowed to fight it. In fairness Joyce has come out in opposition to the decision, saying in his typically understated style that it’s proof “the world has gone mad,” but given he’s a member of the government that approved the mine, as well as being the local member and the freaking Agriculture Minister, that response doesn’t seem to be washing with his constituents.

The backlash against Joyce has been so strong that former independent MP Tony Windsor, who was one of the crucial supporters of the Gillard government and retired before the 2013 election, is openly considering re-entering politics to try and stop the mine. Windsor told the ABC this morning that he’s thinking about contesting his old seat of New England — the rural seat that covers the Liverpool Plains and which Joyce won at the last election.

Windsor’s not the only one with Joyce in his sights — Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has just released this mildly threatening action-movie-trailer-vibe video challenging Joyce to resign from the frontbench and calling him “a Liberal lapdog”. Like everything Lambie does, it sure is something.

It’d be kind of ironic if the thing that ends Barnaby Joyce’s political career for good was announced on a day when everyone was meant to be looking elsewhere, given he so often manages to be the centre of attention. Funny, too.