Of clowns and coal THE Australia Institute

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Of clowns and coal

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The Australia Institute <mail@tai.org.au>

2:13 PM (9 minutes ago)

to me
The Australia Institute

Dear Neville —

Demand for coal is cooling off, but demand for coal news is hotter than a super-critical ‘clean coal’ power plant right now. As usual, we’ve been at the coal face. Our Director of Research, Rod Campbell, has the following dispatches on three flashpoints:

Barnaby Joyce and the Shenhua coal project

The biggest story in coal last week was Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s approval of the Watermark mine, owned by Chinese coal giant, Shenhua. The mine is located on the Liverpool Plains, NSW’s premier agricultural region, which is represented in Federal Parliament by the Agriculture Minister himself, Barnaby Joyce.

Locals are opposed to the mine because of its potential to affect the groundwater that their farms depend on and they’re furious that Joyce has been unable to stop the project. Joyce claims that he has done “everything in my power to try and stop the mine.”

The Australia Institute, through Rod Campbell and Mark Ogge, has also done everything in our power to try and stop the Shenhua project. Not that it’s a competition, after all, Joyce is a Federal Minister and we’re just a think tank, but let’s tally up the scores:

Effort against Watermark project

TAI’s Rod Campbell and Mark Ogge

New England MP Barnaby Joyce

Made a submission on the Environmental Impact Statement

Yes

No

Made a submission to the Planning Assessment Commission

Yes

No

Went to Planning Assessment Commission hearing in Gunnedah, NSW

Yes

No

Said the following:

We like to romanticise the complexities and sinews of our economy but we really have a very simple business plan – we survive on the charges we raise to allow people to dig up black rocks and red rocks: coal and iron ore

No

Yes

This won’t be the last you hear of this project. Before any digging happens a mining licence needs to be issued by the NSW government. By the time that happens, New England could have a new/old Member of Parliament – Tony Windsor, who is thinking of throwing his big hat back in the ring because of the Shenhua mine.

The Battle for Bulga

The village of Bulga continues its David vs Goliath style battle with Rio Tinto, with interesting recent developments.

In previous episodes the Land and Environment Court and the NSW Court of Appeal rejected Rio Tinto’s bid to expand their Warkworth mine near the historic Hunter Valley village of Bulga. But through furious lobbying, Rio got legislation changed and now its project is back in front of the Planning Assessment Commission.

The final decision was to be made without a public hearing, but due to the level of public interest two days of hearings were held in Singleton. TAI’s Rod Campbell went to Singleton and presented on the first day.

But then something happened… or did it?

New NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes has moved to repeal the controversial regulations that Rio had earlier lobbied for, which put ‘economic benefits’ as the primary consideration for project approval. The coal industry cried blue murder, while the people of Bulga commended the move.

Our take is a bit different. As Rod wrote in Climate Spectator:

The mining industry should be celebrating this move. It helps divert attention away from some of their greatest embarrassments and dodgy economic claims.

The repeal is sensible– economic effects should be balanced with environmental and social impacts, which the change emphasises. But it makes little difference to most decisions. For example, more coal mines have been rejected since the change Rio lobbied for than before it. At a time when the economics of coal mines is very uncertain, the last thing the coal industry should want is decision makers focusing on their marginal finances.

The change in regulation is likely to have little actual effect. What is interesting is that the change has been made at all. Not only is there a new minister, but there are also some changes in senior personnel within the NSW Planning Department.

The Planning Assessment Commission has now re-opened submissions in light of the changes. The battle for Bulga continues.

Galilee Basin

The Australia Institute have been arguing for some time that the huge Carmichael mine proposed for Queensland’s  Galilee Basin is unviable without massive government subsidy. Turns out, Queensland Treasury agrees with us.

Documents released under freedom of information (FOI) show that senior Treasury officials felt they were being “set-up” in meetings with the mine and their colleagues at the Department of State Development.  Treasury says that the project is “unbankable”.

We’ve also submitted a few FOI requests in on these issues. Who knows what else might be happening in the Queensland bureaucracy?!? Stay tuned in the coming weeks.

Also, I’ll be heading up to Queensland to be in the State Budget Lockup. Will the new Labor Government continue to be the nations leading coal subsidiser? Or will they invest in schools and hospitals instead? I’ll let you know.

– Rod Campbell
Follow me on twitter at @R_o_d_C

ps. Tomorrow’s Financial Review will feature a great article by Richard Denniss. It will be a story of a tragic love affair between a Prime Minister and… fossilised carbon.

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