Safeguarding Agricultural Land and Water from mining

The Greens want to stop mining developments – all mining, but particularly coal – encroaching on prime agricultural land. We need to safeguard our prime food producing regions fur future generations.

The world is facing the prospects of increasing food insecurity. A chorus of climate change scientists are predicting that there will be smaller average harvests around the world, predicting that some areas will become unfarmable.  High quality farming land is a finite, limited and precious resource.  Successive Governments have failed to protect it from greedy mining interests.

Water supplies in our state's prime agricultural producing areas, such as Gunnedah basin and the Gloucester Valley, are threatened by the runaway expansion of the coal industry in NSW.  The evidence is already in that open cut and long wall coal mining causes lasting damage to aquifers and water catchment areas.  The Greens have been strong backers of the Caroona farmers in their fight to save the Liverpool Plains black soil farming lands.

Mining interests have won out over farming for decades under the current Labor and previous Coalition governments.  This Labor Government have been keen backers of the coal industry, at the expense of local communities, rivers and underground water resources and the environment.  Farming communities have been short changed with Ian Macdonald as the responsible Minister for agriculture because he also has the mining portfolio.

The Greens have introduced this bill to safeguard the long term future of agricultural producers, such as the Caroona farmers in the fertile Liverpool Plains, who are battling to save the valuable farming land around Gunnedah.  We are sending a clear message to the government that safeguarding farming land and water catchments needs to be put before mining interests.  Future generations will pay for this destruction decades after profits have been posted and mining operations closed down.

The Bill will be introduced into the NSW Parliament in May 2009.