No John. Tasmania does not 'need' the money from the mines at all. Tasmania - or some people in it - 'wants' the money from the mines, and will continue to survive without it.

On the other hand, the devils 'need' the mine to stop, otherwise they may not survive.

I think that makes the choice pretty clear. People should stop being greedy - there is more to life than a bigger flat screen TV you know.

Well said Mike. As with previous govt industry support in Tassie; such as logging, mining, ship building, casino's etc... these projects gain govt support and benefit a few investors. The average Tasmanian ends up footing the bill and watching their natural heritage disappear. Much of Macquarie Harbour is poisoned from tailings continuing to flow down the King River. You would think the decision makers would have learned from the Gunns fiasco as well.

"...I wonder what the ratio between roadkill devils and diseasekill devils is?..."

In what way does it matter Whyn? Devils are threatened by disease - and it would be foolish to add to that threat with a totally avoidable process.

It matters to any sensible evaluation of risk. To answer Whyn's question, the ratio is very roughly 1:10 (if figures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_devil are reliable). Let's assume a way over the top worst case scenario, and say mine traffic will constitute an extra 1% traffic in NW Tas (it's actually orders of magnitude less than that; NW Tas is quiet, but not that quiet). That might make the ratio 1.01:10 (notwithstanding the mine traffic is only during the day, and devils are nocturnal). Even if you got all 10 or whatever mines up, it's then 1.1:10.

A significant additional threat? Seriously?

Oh - and here's the link to a real information source:

http://www.publish.csiro.au/?paper=WR98069

Bill - Please stop building strawmen. No one is impugning the honesty of the truck drivers.

But we are all saying that the mine is unnecessary, and will add to the threatening processes for the devils. And we - almost all of us - think that should not occur.

Sorry, but impugning the honesty of truck drivers is exactly what flagging "incentive for vehicle operators to simply throw a carcass off the road into the bush rather than admit to killing a devil" is doing.

Xenophobia much?

I think that Anthony Nolan is making the point that non Tasmanians may not have the concerns of the Tasmanian economy and/or forest ecosystems as a priority and I tend to agree.

That's right Carol. I'd say that this mob have the same deep commitment to the people and forests of Tassie as Freeport or Rio Tinto have to Papuans. I see Bill Thomson, Brian Bourke and their ilk in pretty much the same relationship to the miners as any Papuan headman is to foreigners offering cargo cult riches.

It's hardly a stunning revelation that company directors are concerned primarily with the interests of their shareholders. Indeed they're obliged to be, by law - no matter what their nationality. That's why we have regulations and conditions. But what Nolan is effectively saying is 'it doesn't matter what conditions you set, we don't trust you to comply with them anyway, because you're miners, and you're foreign.' Not a sustainable starting point for rational evaluation.

Anthony, you have forgotten reference that leading green economist and Labor advisor, The Eminent Prof Dr Garnaut, whose corrupt machinations on behalf of BHP Biliton over the transfer of OK Tedi to fictional PNG ownership have finally gotten him banned?
There are few truly clean members of the anti-mining push.

The conditions imposed by Tony Bourke (not Brian, as previously written) are totally inadequate because open cut mining and nature conservation are antithetical; they cannot co-exist. Open cut mining, you may have noticed, leaves little but a hole in the ground and toxic run off.

The foreignness issue is significant in so far as there is now a global professional bourgeoisie whose commitment is only to its own engrossment. This class knows no national, regional or local interest; it is not accountable to any community or constituency.

Still, I daresay that the board of directors of Shree Minerals could point to what the East India Company did to India as the source of their inspiration.

Plus ca change.

"...It's hardly a stunning revelation that company directors are concerned primarily with the interests of their shareholders. Indeed they're obliged to be, by law - no matter what their nationality..."

Good point Bill. But of course, the converse equally applies.

So you will have to forgive us all if we say that we don't actually give a damn about the interests of the mining company, the directors, or their shareholders. We are concerned primarily with the Australian environment and it's native animals.

Therefore - by your own argument - you would have to support us when we look after our own interests, and tell the mining company and its shareholders to go to hell.

So 'your own interests' don't include hospitals, schools, public transport facilities? Because that's what revenue and economic activity ultimately generated by mining helps provide. Remember this is the same Tasmania that's regularly described as a 'basket case' economy. It DOES need the money. Unless you're happy for the rest of the country to fund half a million people to manage the place as a national park. And please don't come the 'conservation generates wealth through tourism'. It's had decades and huge tracts of country to do that in Tasmania; it simply doesn't deliver at anything like the scale required.

Anthony "mining, you may have noticed, leaves little but a hole in the ground" Nolan, have you been to Melbourne, Perth, Ballarat, Bendigo, Launceston to name a few? Look around any of those CBDs, a large chunk of what you see would not be there without mining wealth.

And no, this is not sacrificing native animals for that icky money stuff (that sustains every person in the country). It's not an either/or proposition. To describe the likely impact of an extra few dozen daily traffic movements on a terrestrial species as 'minuscule' is overstating it.

No Bill - it does not NEED the money. It wants it. I think you need to look up the definition of 'need' and 'want' in the dictionary.

And you ask: "Unless you're happy for the rest of the country to fund half a million people to manage the place as a national park."

First of all, that's a nonsensical statement; no-one is proposing that half a million people become park rangers. But if you are asking if I am happy for my taxes to fund the protection of the Tasmanian bush - you betcha!!!

Some parts of the country are always going to cost more then they generate in taxes and wealth. That is the way it is now, the way it was in the past, and the way it will be in the future. And we should be making rational decisions about what we are going to protect from development, and be prepared to pay the cost of doing so.

I am - and I strongly suggest that a lot of others are happy to do so as well.

"we should be making rational decisions about what we are going to protect from development"

Damn straight. That means quantitative risk evaluation - see above.

Yes Whyn I'm aware of the issues but but why would I need to mention Garnaut in this instance?

Bill, it might also be worth noting that, while mining does generate export revenue, it seems to do so largely at the expense of other Australian industries (note recent downsizing at Bluescope Steel as an illustration) because high commodity prices have, in the end, been jacking up the Oz dollar on international exchanges and thereby making other export industries uncompetitive.

Frankly, mining starts to look like little more than economic churn.

And, while I don't inherently object to foreign investment, the evidence of the percentage of profits going overseas from mining versus many other industries is unimpressive. Add in the residual damage that the locals get lumped with remediating and it starts to look as if mining, though profitable in the short term, is not that smart an economic strategy at all.

"mining does generate export revenue, it seems to do so largely at the expense of other Australian industries"

Really? Do you have any figures to support that statement, or any of your others?

False dichotomy. Show me someone who thinks there is the remotest possibility that any mine will result in Tasmania having no devils, and I'll show you someone who hasn't looked at any data, or any maps.

Me: "no devils:
Brad "negatively impact the remaining number of Tasmanian devils"

Very. Big. Difference.

Pretty much everything we do has the potential for a 'negative impact', the question is whether it's likely to be significant. The project in question clearly isn't.