New mining guidelines given thumbs-down : NSW

Andrew Margan, owner of Margan winery, is unhappy with the Strategic Regional Land Use Plan. Photo: Jonathan Carroll

THE state government was hoping a spirit of compromise might prevail when it launched its new plan for mining and gas drilling yesterday, but it fell flat in much of the state's rural heartland.

''I am embarrassed to be a New South Welshman,'' Andrew Margan, the head of the Hunter Wine Industry Association, said. ''What we were seeking was certainty and protection of the vineyard areas. Co-existence [with mining and coal seam gas] is not possible.''

Farmers, winemakers, horse breeders and the state's peak conservation group rejected the new guidelines outright yesterday.

''We might as well accept the dollars and we'll go,'' the winemaker Bruce Tyrrell said.
''The life of the wine industry has been taken out of our hands and put into the hands of the expert panel.''

The Hunter Thoroughbred Breeders Association president, Wayne Bedggood, said the ''policy paves the way for decades of uncertainty''.

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The Age