The approval of the vast Shenhua open-cut coal mine on the agriculturally rich Liverpool Plains of NSW clearly demonstrates how far The Nationals have strayed from their constituency. 

The assumption that The Nationals could stand up for rural and agricultural interests in the national government has been disproved. 

The neo-liberals’ much-touted agricultural competitiveness policies have seen the get-big-or-get-out mentality infect rural Australia and brought about depopulated rural communities, mental and financial stress for those left behind and now, the proof that some of Australia’s most fertile agricultural land must “compete” (and lose) against a foreign-owned coal mine, even in Agricultural Minister Joyce’s own electorate. 

Is this what “the level playing field” delivers?

The neo-liberal ideology has seen agriculture, and its generally careful management of a great deal of Australia’s natural environment, made even more precarious by this decision. 

What good agriculture can achieve to sequester carbon in an era of climate change compared to the madness of wrenching more global-warming coal from the earth – as well as risking eternal damage to aquifers – makes 

this decision by our fossil fuel-driven government even more absurd. 

A new alliance between once-unlikely bedfellows of farmers and Greens looks increasingly logical.

Time for the Country Greens?