Megan Kuhn is a mother and grazier from the Liverpool Plains in the New England electorate, and is a member of the North West Alliance. She writes to explain the inherent need to protect the nation’s farmland from resource giants.
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DESPITE his rhetoric and blame-shifting, our Deputy Prime Minister, Agriculture and Water Minister and local member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, can act on the coal and coal seam gas developments that threaten our highly productive Liverpool Plains food bowl.
Instead of doing everything in his power to protect our food-producing areas, Barnaby Joyce squirms from the responsibility that comes with his portfolio.
Following the news on Monday that Santos has active plans for CSG drilling on the Liverpool Plains, Joyce said the issue is not in his control and passed the buck to his state National Party colleagues.
As a federal minister, Barnaby Joyce has a powerful platform to raise issues within Cabinet and lead a shift away from the quarry vision of his National Party.
However, the National Party he leads does not seem to have a clear policy on CSG.
In the last term, Mr Joyce voted to hand back the federal “water trigger” power to the states.
As deputy PM, he pleads he is powerless, but he himself voted to relinquish to the states a significant Commonwealth power to intervene in mining assessments.
Fortunately this bill was blocked in the Senate, but there could be no clearer failure on Joyce’s behalf to advocate for land and water against mining giants like Santos and Shenhua.
As a federal minister, Joyce has broad and multiple powers under the constitution. Section 51 gives the Commonwealth powers to intervene in respect to: i) trade and commerce, xx) foreign corporations and, xxix) external affairs.
Each of these powers provides the potential means for the Commonwealth to intervene on environmental matters.
Fraser Island was protected from sand mining when Malcolm Fraser’s government used the trade and commerce power to intervene, despite the fierce opposition of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s state government.
When challenged, the decision was unanimously upheld by the High Court of Australia.
Mr Joyce could use the corporations power to control any domestic or foreign corporation, or the external affairs power against projects that affect matters protected by international environmental treaties.
Instead of leading the charge to use Commonwealth powers to fight for the protection of agricultural land, on Monday, Barnaby Joyce defended his failures by pointing out that Commonwealth intervention may involve a trip to the High Court.
Well it may, but there is a High Court precedent in favour of intervention on the trade and commerce ground, given that Shenhua coal and Santos CSG are destined for export.
Commonwealth governments have gone to court to defend the countryside from damaging projects before.
Barnaby Joyce is our deputy PM, our minister for agriculture and water and our local representative.
When he claims powerlessness to protect our prime agricultural land and our precious groundwater resources, we ask “Is minister Joyce effective in his role?”
Our food security and water resources are too important to leave to buck-passing and empty rhetoric when the resource giants have the nation’s farmland in their sights.
On June 23 a forum about water and mining will be held at Wests’ Diggers, Tamworth. It will hear from experts, farmers, and the New England candidates who accept the invitation.
