In no form did I defend the proposal to mine the Shenhua Watermark exploration lease during my recent interview on the Sky News program Sunday Agenda. 

In fact I was at pains to point out the plainly apparent unviability of the proposal at current world coal prices.

I suggested Shenhua, now nominally a net exporter of coal in China, would be doing some serious pencil sharpening with their calculations on the economic viability of this giant mine.

I am sure there are vastly smarter minds than mine that would be thinking about the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars into a green field, and they would be aware they could buy a working mine already exporting coal for a quarter of the overall cost of the Watermark proposal.

I did state the process that Environment Minister Greg Hunt – with the advice provided by the Independent Expert Scientific Committee (IESC) – could only go down the road he took. Otherwise it would be straight to Federal Court in a case that would be difficult to win.

There are 17 steps in the approval process of this mine. The only step the federal government was involved with was step 15, examination of the hydrology data through the IESC.

The approval of the mine is now in the remit of the NSW government. 

It gets the royalties, it gets the cheque when the mine is signed off, and the state government owns the coal. It’s the state government’s decision.

Barnaby Joyce MP

Member for New England

Deputy Leader of The 

Nationals

Minister for Agriculture

Editor’s Note: The NDL did in fact err. The headline more correctly might have read that Mr Joyce was in fact defending the decision process as it now stands, not the decision to approve the mine.