UNDER THREAT .. not only oil .. attempts for a long time ..
SEA change ... moves are afoot to allow mining of the Great Barrier Reef.
COURIER-MAIL Edition 2 .. M0N 08 JUN 1998 ..
Mining interests and governments concerned by Australia’s dwindling oil reserves are quietly exploring ways of overturning laws prohibiting mining on the Great Barrier Reef, reports PHIL DICKIE
ON THE face of it, the Great Barrier Reef looks as secure as it has ever been. It is protected, some say over-protected, by marine parks and world heritage declarations, has its own watchdog and its own scientists. Ministers, both State and Federal, continually mutter the mantra that nothing would be allowed to threaten the reef. It is a far cry from 1967, when mining and petroleum exploration leases covered fourfifths of the reef. Cane grower Donald Forbes was poised to kick off an expected bonanza of drilling, dredging and extracting with a proposal to begin mining the "dead coral" of Ellison Reef for agricultural lime. In the Act obliged Mining Warden Mr J.W. Ashfield, sitting through the November heat in a stuffy room in Innisfail, to listen to the handful of conservationists and scientists who submitted that not only was Ellison Reef not dead, but that its mining would surely mean death to surrounding reefs. But Mr Ashfield, SM, did listen. And, to the surprise of all and the extreme annoyance of Queensland’s then coalition government, Mr Ashfield said no to Mr Forbes.
As poet Judith Wright, one of the gaggle of conservationists, later wrote in The Coral Battleground:
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