The community expectation was that the government would finally draw a meaningful "line in the sand", ruling portions of the state's most productive and important agricultural land off-limits to destructive mining practices.

The Newcastle Herald reported this week that the Hunter had, since 1980, lost 42.5 per cent of its food production land. While not all this loss has been due to mining, the extraordinary expansion of open-cut coal extraction is the most visible cause.

Frustration had been simmering over the long years during which Labor gave virtually carte blanche to the mining industry. Feelings were approaching boiling point just before the election as the rising prices of coal and energy tempted some of the world's biggest and most powerful companies to abandon previous unwritten conventions and start seeking permission to strip away alluvial plains, forests, ridges and hills.

Handshake agreements that had made the best farm and river lands sacrosanct from mining were dumped as the miners waved the promise of immense royalty riches in front of politicians and bureaucrats wrestling with budget problems.

Labor could never bring itself to consider reining in the miners, especially since the damage they did was remote from the party's key city constituency. When the Coalition said it understood the issues and would take a firm line to defend irreplaceable water and land assets, farmers and regional communities celebrated.

This week ominous signs emerged that the hoped-for solution may prove to have been a mirage. Farmer representatives on high-level groups set up to thrash out the new guidelines for the co-existence of mining and agriculture declared that hope was fading. The state administration, they alleged, could not move from its established pro-mining rut and the politicians appeared to be buckling under the weight of resource industry lobbying.