Unfortunately, the loss could prove to be more serious than the two wins and hit coal miners sooner.

All three events which produced the 2:1 result took place overseas, one each in China, India and South Africa.

The loss, and the jury is still out on precisely what it means, is a report that the Chinese government is planning to introduce coal import restrictions to aid an ailing domestic coal sector.

The Indian and South Africa wins also involve government action (or inaction) and could lead to future increased demand for Australian coal, though how far into the future is unknown.

China first, because it is such an important market for Australian coal.

According to what seems to be a well-sourced report carried by the Reuters news service the Chinese government is being lobbied by the country’s coal industry to limit the import of what is termed “low-quality” coal.

The China National Coal Association is said to have asked the government to stop the import of all coal with an ash content of more than 15% and a sulphur content of more than 0.6%.

Potentially, some Australian thermal coal could be outside those parameters but an awful lot is under the proposed thresholds and has the added advantage of being high in calorific value.

Chinese coal producers, according to Reuters, seem to disagree, telling their government that Australian coal is generally of the worst type with an ash content of between 23%-and-25% and a sulphur content of between 0.8% and 1%.

Whether the Chinese coal miners are telling the truth, or not, is irrelevant in this situation because what seems to be happening is that a paper trail is being laid by the Chinese miners to provide an excuse for government action.

Previous attempts by the Chinese miners to whack an embargo on coal imports have failed but the game is changing with the government keen to be seen to be doing something to limit air pollution.

The irony is that most of the pollution is caused by burning China’s own low-grade coals that power generators are obliged to use even though they prefer high-grade imported coal.

Whether a government coal-import curb is looming seems unlikely because it will hit commercial contracts though in China a helping hand from government in one form or another is never far away when an industry has problems and threatens job losses.

On the other side of the coin there are the two positive developments with the Indian government making a dog’s breakfast of its coal industry, and the South African government sending all the wrong signals about investment in its coal industry, again.

In India, the coal crisis that started two weeks ago with a Supreme Court ruling that more than 200 mining licenses issued to private companies were illegal morphed into a damaging black-out in the country’s commercial centre, Mumbai.

Technically, the power outage was the result of a breakdown at one power station but because there is insufficient back-up in the national, largely coal-fired grid, businesses were forced to rely on their own diesel generation units.

The latest Mumbai black-out was a reminder of why two of India’s biggest company, Adani and GVK, are pushing ahead with their plans to develop big coal projects in Queensland despite low international coal prices.

In the case of the Indian investors low prices might actually help their ultimate business case because it potentially means more competitive and more reliable power supplies at home, which is the end game.

The South African development was more a case of a government minister from that country kicking an own goal, this time over the planned split of BHP Billiton.

South African Minister for Mineral Resources Ngoako Ramatlhodi told a mining conference in Perth that he wanted black South Africans to get a bigger stake in the BHP Billiton assets in his country being allocated to the spin-off vehicle.

The irony of that comment being made on the same day Australia officially abandons its controversial mining tax would not have been lost on senior BHP Billiton executives.

For international investors the suggestion that local black economic empowerment groups get an extra share of the South African assets in the spin-off business is a fresh warning that the country is a lousy place to invest.

Australia might be a high cost country but it got a little bit easier for coal miners that had been threatened by the mining tax at the same time South Africa seemed to be proposing an effective increase in the cost of doing business there.