Is Australia in a ‘sweet spot?'

However the mining boom hasn't been so great for trade exposed industries hit by reduced demand due to the high Australian dollar, and regional communities at the coal face of the multi-speed economy, enduring the social dislocation created by the fly-in-fly-out economy.

We are also seeing the mining sector clash with the farmers seriously for the first time. Prime agricultural land and food security versus coal seam gas. You chose.

A more prudent path would be to pace out the boom and use the wealth to diversify and prolong the benefits, enabling us to modernize and improve public infrastructure over time. Slowing down mining sector expansion will also ease pressure on trade exposed industries by reducing the value of the dollar and restore some balance to the multi-speed economy.

The second consideration is the environmental consequences of the mining boom. Northern Australia is home to a breathtaking interconnected mosaic of escarpment country, heathlands, rainforests, coastline, floodplains, mangroves, coral reefs and over sixty intact river systems.

The region contains no less than 25 per cent of the world's tropical savannah, by far the largest proportion of this habitat in the world and the only significant area in an economically developed, politically stable country. Similar woodlands once covered parts of Africa, Asia and South America, now tragically 70 per cent of the world's tropical savannah is lost forever.

The bookends of this massive ecosystem are Western Australia's Kimberley and Queensland's Cape York Peninsula, two of the most outstanding wilderness areas left on the planet. Their species richness and diversity is staggering. Cape York alone contains three thousand plant species, half of Australia's birds, one third of our mammals and a quarter of our frogs and reptiles.

With less than five per cent cleared, Northern Australia is remarkably intact. But it's a fragile system under serious threat on multiple fronts – a wave of mining development, industrialization, seabed trawling, land clearing, logging, incorrect fire management and feral weeds and animals, from cane toads to pigs and water buffalo.

If that wasn't enough, there may be a major new threat on the horizon. In September, Tony Abbott announced that if elected the coalition would pursue an ambitious plan to double agricultural production by the middle of the century, through a network of new dams across Australia's north. This will include destroying millions of hectares of wilderness, over extraction from aquifers and huge irrigation and hydro electricity schemes.

It's as if Mr Abbott is blissfully ignorant to the causes of the near collapse of the Murray Darling system.

Moreover, in 2010 an expert panel called the Northern Taskforce investigated the development potential of northern Australia. It found that due to remoteness, poor soils and lack of infrastructure the economics of new dams don't add up, the geology is unsuitable, the climate hostile and evaporation in water storages extreme. But as the climate debate has revealed, Tony Abbott isn't one to let science get in the way of policy.

Alternatively, Australia could lead the way in developing a conservation economy for northern Australia. It will be no easy task. The notion that national prosperity is inextricably tied to exploiting our natural resources is deeply engrained in our national psyche.

The first thing we need is perspective. We significantly over rate the contribution the mining sector makes to national employment and GDP. By recent polling, both indicators are up to ten times less than the public thinks. For example, mining contributes less than two per cent of national employment when the public believes it's over 20 per cent.