Queensland’s first Greens senator Larissa Waters and long-time NSW Greens state upper house member Lee Rhiannon built their federal campaigns on targeting coal mining developments.
Waters, an environmental lawyer, said she regarded farming land as “sacrosanct” and she would seek to change federal environmental laws to benefit farmers.
"What I want to see as an environmental lawyer is our federal environmental laws amended so that the full impact of this resource extraction can be considered on farmland,” she told The Australian newspaper.
“At the moment, only the impacts on threatened species can be considered. That's important, too, but it's not everything.
“We need to look at the wider impact – we need to look at the loss of productive farmland. This food-producing land is too important for Queensland, it must be protected."
Rhiannon, who is widely tipped to win the NSW senate spot and to eventually replace Senator Bob Brown as Greens leader before the next election, has listed one of her key priorities as real action on climate change, with a shift from coal to renewables.
“NSW needs a strong Greens voice in the Senate and I’m looking forward to the campaign,” she said.
"I will continue my work alongside coal communities and farmers for a future beyond coal and take the battle to save the southeast forests to Canberra.”
The NSW Greens party has led the campaign for “No New Coal” developments in NSW, according to their website:
“The Greens want coal-fired power to be phased out in place of clean, renewable energy. Coal industry jobs could be replaced with sustainable industry jobs if the government showed some leadership and funded the growth of sustainable green energy industries along with supporting communities during the transition period from coal to renewables.”
In May 2009, Rhiannon introduced the Mining (Safeguarding Agricultural Land and Water From Mining) Amendment Bill 2009 into the NSW Parliament.
The bill seeks to stop mining developments – all mining, but particularly coal – encroaching on prime agricultural land.
