LAST July, during a visit to the Hunter Valley, senior federal opposition figure Malcolm Turnbull said what everybody knows but few will dare to say.
Suggesting that the federal government ought to have a bigger say in the assessment of mining proposals, Mr Turnbull said state governments had "a gigantic conflict of interest".
"The state governments have a massive vested financial interest in these projects going
ahead. They don't get any revenue or very little revenue from prime agricultural land, but they get hundreds of millions of dollars from these coalmines and coal seam gas," Mr Turnbull said in a radio interview.
His words may be remembered by some in the wake of the NSW Department of Planning's recommendation to approve Coal and Allied's Warkworth Extension project. Recommended is the total closure of an Upper Hunter road and the complete removal of an important local landform near the village of Bulga.
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Newcastle Herald
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