Australia is the country in question. Green is the colour of the politicians in charge and black is the colour of the coal which is paying their wages.

See the problem? The people who hate coal, especially The Greens Party leader Senator Bob Brown, would like to close the coal industry, while deep down knowing that he would be shooting himself in the hip pocket.

That picture of Bob and his green friends amuses the Hog immensely, because it is one of coal haters who rely intimately on coal to feed their families, light their homes and pay their mortgages.

Just how much they rely on the industry they want to blacken was made clear in the Australian government’s budget on Tuesday and reinforced on Wednesday with the release of the national trade figures for the month of March.

First the budget, because it revealed an economy up to its ears in debt, a cool $100 billion to be precise, and with more to come as the government struggles to find the money to repay its creditors.

In fact, rather than retire debt this year it is about to run up another monster annual deficit of $49 billion.

The budget also revealed a government which is slowly, reluctantly, recognising that it has no option but to assist mining, especially coal and iron ore mining, or risk a country-destroying debt blow-out.

For coal, that assistance is to come in the form of relaxed rules when it comes to bringing in skilled workers. Minuscule by any measure the new rules mean that some mines will get more workers and some proposed mines will actually be able to start as planned.

Aiding the mining industry will deeply hurt The Greens because it attacks the roots of their deep-seated beliefs that mining is a fundamentally bad industry and that coal mining is an abomination.

But, if this week’s small gesture on skills cut against The Greens grain there is much worse to come as shown in the March trade figures which revealed a robust recovery in exports led – surprise, surprise – by coal.

Rather than report a modest rebound in the terms of trade, with most economists expecting a surplus of $500 million versus a deficit of $87 billion in February, the actual figure was a surplus of $1.74 billion.

The trade figures will get better as global demand for commodities grows, as it must if Australia is to repay its debts – not to mention pay its politicians and the rest of the community.

Current forecasts point to a continuation of the mining boom with the next three to five years delivering bumper exports, and huge profits, which add up to the terms of trade (a measure of exports over imports) being the best in the past 140 years.

Good as that sounds it will cause problems, especially for the non-mining parts of the economy, in the form of a continued upward march in the exchange rate.

Some tipsters are already suggesting that a rate of $US1.50 per Australian dollar is possible with the top tip being $1.70.

At rates like that manufacturing, education and tourism exports will be savaged, with some companies wiped out and workers forced to make the migratory move to the resources sector just to get a job.

Now we come to the really interesting bit and justification for that snappy opening to this week’s idle thoughts about “it ain’t easy being green”, and that is best explained in this way:

• Right now the best thing (if not only thing) Australia can do to manage its economy is retire debt and create jobs in mining, especially coal and iron ore – which green believers dislike.
• Over time, as jobs in manufacturing are killed by the high dollar, mining will become even more important.
• Coal haters are thus faced with a double-barrelled problem – attack coal today and attack the only strong part of the economy or attack coal later when it is one of the only acts in town.

Like The Hog said: “it ain’t easy being green”