What mining billionaire and presumptive United Australia Party leader Clive Palmer is not mentioning to voters in the Page electorate

Clive Palmer, former Liberal National Party member and presumptive leader of the inchoate United Australia Party, is happy to tell us he is an oppressed billionaire, but he doesn’t mention his Galilee Coal Project (China First Coal) which will develop an integrated coal project including a coal mine, railway and port facility to export thermal coal to international markets.

Supporters of Bimblebox Nature Reserve had this to say:

If allowed to go ahead, this project will destroy the Bimblebox Nature Refuge, impact on our precious groundwater resources and help open up the whole Galilee Basin to more coal mines.

Over the life of the mine, the coal from the China First project will generate greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to nearly four years of Australian total annual emissions! It would need to be transported over farmland and shipped through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

His attitude is already well known already when it comes to off-shore gas exploration leases in Papua New Guinea:

If we find gas, we develop it and make billions of dollars out of it. First we are looking at reserves, then the cost of extracting, but it looks very promising.

He also had this to say in 2011 about coal seam gas mining in Australia:

Let me be clear, I do support the CSG industry.

As Palmer has stated his intention to a run candidate in the Page electorate at the September 2013 federal election, perhaps the local media should be asking him about his attitude to mining in our region – in light of the fact that his company Waratah Coal Pty Ltd is currently seeking to renew its 3,200 ha exploration license EL 6467 and its 4,616 ha exploration license  EL 7186 centred 36 km SSW and 33 km SSW of Grafton respectively.

Both these licenses cover tenements in the Nymboida River catchment (part of the wider Clarence River Catchment) which supplies drinking water to an estimated 126,000 people in the Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour City local government areas.

This is a Waratah Coal photograph purporting to show its exploration activities in the Nymboida region:

NSW DPI Division of Resources and Energy mapping: