Moving on from the age of confrontation

So, our problem is not how we can stop Australia from looking like a moonscape, but how can we make sure that there are plenty of minerals left for the benefit of future generations?

If history is a guide, we should not be worried unduly. In the long saga of mining worldwide, there have been regular booms and busts, just as there have been with the overall world economy — despite all the efforts of eminent economists to remove boom and bust cycles.

But, there is a very positive outlook also. Because mining is more difficult in Australia than in other parts of the world, our mining technology has become very advanced and will enable us to find more minerals, and do so at greater depths than previously envisaged, thereby creating an infinitely larger supply.

It also creates another revenue earner for us, as our unique expertise with minerals should be sold around the world to a greater extent than it is now.

We can be sure that Australia’s current mining boom will end abruptly sometime soon. Efficiently managed and adequately financed miners who relate well to their communities and the environment will survive and prosper, while others will go to the wall. What we have to decide is which ones deserve to survive and make sure that we work co-operatively with them in building a stronger nation. We must remember that mining provides less than 20 per cent of our gross national product every year. Our main effort must be to ensure that the remaining 80 per cent retains and advances its prosperity too — but we won’t achieve this by punishing miners.

We have a desperate need to improve our national productivity in all fields of endeavor through much greater efficiency than we achieve now.

Farmers and Graziers

The confrontation between rural producers and miners has reached a point of unnecessary hysteria, mainly caused by governments putting the whole problem in the too hard basket and running away from it as fast as they can, but also fuelled by local political zealots who are not landowners and whose sole interest is to use this issue to enhance their public profile. To my dying day, I will defend the right of a landholder to tell miners that they have no right to enter his or her property for any reason until a legal agreement is reached through a clearly-defined negotiating process that adequately compensates the owner every year throughout the life of the mine or gas well.

The gas industry is the main offender in this, and while there are some notable exceptions, too many gas drillers behave like Attila the Hun, and this must stop.

While the key issue is, and must always be, the preservation of prime arable land, there are too many farmers whose militancy goes beyond the bounds of reason and sanity. In fact, some of them are enjoying the battle so much, they will be grossly disappointed when it ends.

They will greatly advance their cause if they calm down, as miners do have some rights and not all of them want to destroy good land, nor do they want to buy it cheaply.

Once more, the disease of confrontation cancer is running rampant out in rural Australia, and must be cured so sanity can prevail. This will happen when governments produce an enlightened framework for negotiations. Then, we will get some real results in which everyone can win.