Australia: Christmas Island ponders push into medical cannabis

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Khaliesha Amin is helping her ­island reinvent itself beyond mining, and beyond the once-booming business of immigration detention.

For more than 100 years, the export of phosphate rock to Asia has sustained Christmas Island, 2700km northeast of Perth. It is how Ms Amin’s grandfather and father earned a living. She has worked for the mine since 2007 and it remains the island’s biggest employer of locals, directly responsible for more than 200 jobs.

But the company estimates there is at most 10 years of export production left. During the past decade, the Coalition and Labor have shown a reluctance to allow mining to expand on the island, which is home to several endemic species and is now more than 60 per cent national park.

Phosphate Resources Limited has begun to look for new ways to use its leases, most notably by ­diversifying into agriculture.

Ms Amin did not know it...

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