PRIME agricultural land like the Liverpool Plains food bowl risked being turned into a mining wasteland, a Gunnedah forum of 500 people concerned about future food security was warned yesterday.
Influential Sydney radio broadcaster Alan Jones hosted the forum at the Gunnedah Town Hall amid a militia of mining activists, farmers, rural residents and other agricultural producers.
The three-hour forum included seven main speakers, with a general Q&A segment at the end.
❏ Mining expansion 'disastrous' in long term here
Click on the below image for more photos from the forum
Mr Jones, the son of a Queensland farmer, opened the forum with stories of landholders throughout the Darling Downs in Queensland and the local Liverpool Plains who had had problems with powerful mining companies such as Eastern Star Gas, and he claimed incidents of harrassment, intimidation and manipulation by mining companies over local landowners.
He warned farmers and landowners they had to stand up to the mining industry.
“My old man once said, ‘Farmers can face anything’, but farmers have never faced anything like this,” Mr Jones said.
He said he has had correspondence documenting the gravity of the crisis the Gunnedah food bowl Basin faced.
Gunnedah Coal Seam Gas Committee chairwoman Rosemary Nankevill said she was overwhelmed at the attendance.
Mrs Nankevill said the community had a moral obligation to look after local farmers, and claimed some mining companies were treating landholders like lepers on the land they’d been farming for many years.
“Stay firm, stay focused – we will not put our precious supplies at risk,” Mrs Nankevill urged the forum.
Other speakers at the forum included psychologist Wayne Somerville, Kirsty Ruddock, of the NSW Farmers’ Association, soil scientist Robert McCreath and journalist and former farmer Heather Brown.
They spoke of the long-term effects of mining expansion and development and the impact this would have, not just on farmers but on the wider community, and how the next steps would likely be in legal territory.
Mullaley Gas Pipeline Accord chairman David Quince said people were invited from across the state, including mining companies, but no mining company representatives identified themselves to the audience and none took the podium.
The forum came in the wake of comments by Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd last month that global food production would need to increase by 70 per cent by 2050 to feed an expected population of 9.3 billion.
Mr Jones said the irony of the Rudd speech was that it was presented in Brisbane, when Queensland had lost so much prime agricultural land to mining.
He referred to the invasion of mining as the “raping and plundering” of prime land.
Mr Jones warned that the preservation and security of the Liverpool Plains food bowl was under threat from increased mining activity, and said governments needed to ensure prime agricultural land and food security would be quarantined from mining expansion.
“I am opposed to these people coming here and thinking they can take this land,” Mr Jones said.
Doctor Pauline Roberts likened polluting mining companies to the tobacco industry 60 years ago, when the first studies came out attributing the smoking of cigarettes to lung cancer.
Dr Roberts said the response by the government to the tobacco problem then was to tax the product, and she asked the audience if this sounded familiar to the carbon tax debate.
US studies clearly showed that people living in towns near coal mines had an increased risk of a range of diseases, she said.
The lack of monitoring of the air in the Hunter Valley was also allowing companies to get away with pollution, she said.
She encouraged people to continue to protest and rally against mining.
“Your activism is the only thing that will stop this madness,” Dr Roberts said.
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