A domestic spat in Oz, via Mining Australia, offers an insight into the friction and stress that surround mining projects when wires get crossed, as an “anti-mining” report claiming that 80 per cent plus of residents of Australia’s Hunter Valley are opposed to coal mining is “slammed by industry”. Why? Because they think the new publication from the Australia Institute is an  “ideologically driven, anti-mining exercise”.

Entitled Seeing through the dust: Coal in the Hunter Valley, the survey makes the following conclusions:

"- Only five per cent of Hunter Valley jobs are in the coal industry – in other words, 95 per cent of Hunter workers do not work in the coal industry.
- Only two per cent of NSW government revenue comes from coal royalties – the other 98 per cent comes from other sources.

The coal industry’s regular economic claims give the public an inflated impression of its importance. To investigate the difference between public perception and the reality of the industry’s role in the Hunter economy, The Australia Institute conducted a survey of 1,001 Hunter residents. Key results indicate that:

- respondents think the coal industry employs four times more people than it does
- respondents think coal royalties are ten times more important than they are
- strong majorities of respondents answered that the coal industry has a negative effect on the Hunter’s:

air quality and health
water and bushland
other industries."

On the other hand, a NSW Minerals Council-led counter-survey found that 70%  of respondents in NSW supported mining.

The author of the original report, Roderick Campbell, said: 

“The coal industry’s public statements invariably emphasise its apparent importance, but… 95 per cent of Hunter workers do not work in the coal industry and only two per cent of NSW government revenue comes from coal royalties. Stopping the expansion of the Hunter coal industry and beginning to reduce its output levels… [would] improve air quality, health and environmental impacts and bring benefits for other industries. […] An ever-expanding coal industry is not essential to the economic future of the Hunter.”

CEO of the NSW Minerals Council, Stephen Galilee, called this an insult to the “15,000 local workers and their families who rely on mining for their livelihoods [that is] particularly insensitive given mining in the Hunter is going through tough times and people are losing their jobs.”

He also made the point that the report doesn’t acknowledge jobs in sectors linked to or dependent on mining: “A visit to any of the industrial estates across the Hunter valley would find hundreds of jobs in manufacturing businesses that rely on work with mining operations, yet according to the Australia Institute these jobs aren’t mining-related.”

Your correspondents are sure that there are strong arguments on both sides here. Outside of its obvious local and regional impact, this story's more indicative of how easily temperatures can rise and the public discourse get out of hand. Given that the public spats have in this case resulted in an inconclusive debate where either side’s firmly entrenched and the neutral follower’s left without any real idea of the true picture - given there are two apparently contradictory sets of survey results cited as evidence - it's debatable what the uninvested reader can gain from this. The main take home lesson is essentiall that the whole fiasco underlines the importance of a good, balanced PR and comms strategy, no matter what your position on a community relations issue, and the complementary need for industry to get its house in order with regard to building solid, transparent, mutually beneficial relationships with communities as a first and best defence against criticism. (Not to infer that this is not the case in NSW). 

Of course, there’s always an alternative perspective: if you believe below-the-line commenters on this article (not a strategy universally recommended, though it can offer an eye-opening/watering cross section of what the world outside one’s bubble is really like), this is a piece about how it’s “about time the industry stepped-up [sic] it's [sic] public awareness campaigns to counter these lies. Stop whinging on the-ropes [sic] and do something about it, the Twitterati and social-media-hacktivists are crucifying industry.”

So there you have it. Straight from the horse’s rather foamy mouth.  Bon weekend.

ENDS

https://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/anti-mining-report-slammed-by-ind...
https://www.tai.org.au/content/seeing-through-dust-coal-hunter-valley-eco...
https://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/coal-not-bedrock-of-hunter-valley-econom...