THE QUEENSLAND government’s draft regional land-use plans have been applauded by the mining industry and hailed as an opportunity for co-existence.

Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney unveiled the draft Darling Downs Regional Plan on Friday, which he said “seeks to address the potential land conflicts which may arise from the interaction between agriculture and mining.”

“The recent boom in resource exploration and extraction has meant increased economic opportunities, but also increasing uncertainty regarding the impact of the industry on the agricultural assets and communities in regions throughout Queensland,” Seeney said in the report’s foreword.

The plan

The draft plan aims to identify priority agricultural areas (PAAs), strategic areas of the most regionally significant agricultural production, Seeney said.

Within PAAs, agriculture is the priority land use and mining companies that wish to operate in those areas must co-exist with agriculture.

The criteria mining companies must address to share agricultural land with farmers includes no material loss of land, no threat to continued agricultural land use and no material impact on overland flow and aquifers.

However, any resource activity lasting less than 12 months is excluded from the new criteria.

The main Darling Downs region to be protected covers from the border near Stanthorpe, north to Chinchilla and west to Toowoomba. Land around Goondiwindi and St George was also earmarked as PAA land.

The draft plan will also include buffers protecting towns from mining, but councils can decide to expand or minimise the buffers in their town plans with state government approval.

The former Labor government's strategic cropping land legislation will be amended to put the Darling Downs Regional Plan into effect.

The response

The Queensland Resources Council welcomed the plans as an opportunity for Queensland to “lead the nation in promoting genuine co-existence between two vital industry sectors.”

QRC chief executive Michael Roche said that while the documentation would take time to consider in detail, the end game should always be about securing the best outcomes for Queensland.

“As confirmed by recent public opinion polling, there is an overwhelming appetite on the Darling Downs and central Queensland for productive co-existence between the resource and agricultural sectors,” Roche said.

“Queensland and the nation’s interests are best served by growing both sectors, and this is a gold-plated opportunity for Queensland to show the rest of the country how to deliver on co-existence between two major pillars of the economy.”

“One thing the Queensland Government and all industry stakeholders can take credit for is their commitment to a process intent on promoting co-existence rather than retreating to a political view that it’s all too hard,” Roche added.

The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies also came out in support of the plans.

“It has been a difficult process to sift through the various interests of Central Queensland and Darling Downs community and industry groups, however AMEC hopes that a clear path to co-existence is delivered by the plans,” AMEC regional manager Bernie Hogan said.

“AMEC contributed to the plans to enable all sectors to move away from the cumbersome legislation that has been constraining Queensland, such as Strategic Cropping Land and Wild Rivers declarations further north.

“The process of engaging local councils, industry, environmental and community groups in forming the draft plans has ensured all issues were on the table,” Hogan said, adding that the group urged the industry to get involved in the consultation phase of the planning which is now underway.

Slightly less enthusiastic about the draft plans was the Queensland Farmer’s Federation. The state’s peak body for agriculture said the plans provided a framework for protecting farming land, but “there is a lot of work to be done” before the plans received its full support.

“The plans very clearly place a very important priority on agricultural land uses and associated resources and indeed they are geared toward ensuring protection of the sector and ensuring sustainable coexistence,” QFF chief executive Dan Galligan said.

“There are some aspects of the plans that we believe need improvement to give farmers greater certainty regarding their businesses and the role they play in defining acceptable coexistence and we want to see the implementation of the plans reflect this in a stronger way.”

Galligan said while the plans acknowledged the importance of “Priority Agricultural Land Uses” there was a question around exactly how this prioritisation would be implemented in reality.

“It will be in the drafting of proposed legislative amendments to the Strategic Cropping Land Act and potentially through broader land access negotiations that the intent of these plans is realised.”

However, the state Minister for Agriculture and member for Toowoomba South John McVeigh said the region’s most important agricultural land would be protected under the plan.

“Agriculture and resources are two of the Newman Government’s four economic pillars and the Darling Downs is rich in both of these,” McVeigh said.

“The draft plan safeguards the Toowoomba districts most productive agricultural assets through mapped PPAs, while ensuring the state can benefit from the abundance of coal, natural gas and other resource deposits.

“It means strict criteria for resource companies seeking to operate within a priority agricultural land use area and if a company’s plans are incompatible with the benchmarks the plan has set, it won’t happen.”

The draft plan is now open for a public consultation period until September 20.

To view the plan, visit http://www.dsdip.qld.gov.au/darling-downs