That Western Australian Mines Minister Norman Moore made the order yesterday to ban mining on 230 square kilometres of land around Margaret River should have been a surprise to absolutely nobody.

Nor should it be any indication that WA is closed for business when it comes to mining.

All Moore has done is made a politically pragmatic decision and one that will not harm the state’s investment potential.

To those who don’t know, Margaret River is one of those wonderful little hamlets where a number of very rich people have holiday homes.

The same rich people who do not want mining in their backyards.

The same rich people who largely got rich from mining or mining-related activities in the first place.

The same rich people who donate to the Liberal Party.

Of course the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies chief executive officer Simon Bennison came out with an announcement saying that it was not consulted.

That is Bennison’s job. He has members that had some skin in the Margaret River game and he is doing exactly what AMEC says it will do – stand up for the rights of its members and explorers.

He probably has a fair beef if he didn’t receive a call from Moore telling him what the government was going to do. That’s just how these sort of things are done.

But to say that the mining ban will harm investment in the state is taking it a bit far.

Many of the people that have a say in where mining investment goes in WA probably have holiday homes around Margaret River. It’s that kind of place.

No, these investment types know the rules. Don’t fund mines where your rich mates live.

Driving home this point is a story I heard about the Esperance Port’s iron ore operations.

The Esperance Port Authority made a considerable investment in its iron ore handling facilities to help assuage resident concerns about the red iron ore dust staining the town’s pristine white beaches.

Iron ore types have come from as far afield as Sweden to see how the port made its shed work its dust mitigation methods were that effective.

There was an iron ore spill on the wharf. Well spill is probably too strong a term. They say it took a wharf worker about 10 minutes with a shovel and a wheel barrow to clean it up.

There were apparently a dozen photos of said spill circulating around town by day’s end.

Okay, so Esperance Port didn’t do itself any favours showering the town with lead, but still.

Interestingly, many of the people opposed to the iron ore exports from the town were retirees who had made their money mining in the Goldfields.

This same issue is playing itself out in the east, although over there they have a more pragmatic view. Their Margaret River analogue is the Hunter Valley – at least on the vineyard front – and that has been a coal mining region for years.

One such battle surrounds Cockatoo Coal’s Hume project in New South Wales’ Southern Highlands.

In that case, the fact that Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban had a house near the proposed mine was not enough to stymie its development.

But then again, given the parlous state of NSW’s economy after the Carr-crash government and subsequent Labor administration’s it will probably take any industry activity it can get.

This article first appeared in ILN's sister publication MiningNews.net.