Mining (Protection of Exempt Land From Mining Operations) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (16:22): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Mining Act 1971. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (16:23): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Earlier today I referred to the petition signed by 2,475 South Australians, and the fact that this petition calls for the reform of two acts of parliament. This bill gives effect to the second of those reform acts, namely, in relation to the Mining Act.

The bill seeks to give effect to the call from residents, overwhelmingly in rural communities, to be able to restrict mining operations on their land or in their local areas. The bill is aimed squarely at situations such as those currently occurring on Yorke Peninsula and Eyre Peninsula, including the proposed Hillside mine, which was just recently been approved, although we do not yet know what form that mine will take.

The bill that I have brought forward deals with an issue that we have discussed in this place a number of times over the years but we still have not got it right, and that is the issue of exempt land. As members would know, under the Mining Act, land that has been used for farming, for the growing of crops, has been exempt from the Mining Act for many decades. Yet, that exemption does not mean what it says.

Land is only exempt from mining until a mining company seeks a waiver of the exemption and, if the landholder concerned is reluctant to provide that waiver, then the matter goes to the Environment, Resources and Development Court. There are a number of problems with this approach, not the least of which is that the stakeholders are limited to the owners of land on which mining operations are proposed to be conducted. The current Mining Act ignores the neighbours and it ignores the wider community.

This bill seeks to remedy that shortcoming and to give the broader community a say in mining projects that will affect them. First of all, the bill provides that mining companies cannot simply pick off individual property owners and get them to sign off on a mining project. Under this bill, the mining company and the landholder cannot sign a waiver agreement without first directly notifying all the neighbours. This is a missing link in the current regime. It is not only direct neighbours who have a stake in a mining project or who might be impacted by a mining project: it is also people in the broader community.

The bill also provides that the mining company has to advertise their intention to agree on a waiver with a landholder. They have to advertise that fact in a local newspaper and the mining department must also put it on its website. The bill provides that, once those two things have happened, there is a two-week objection period. The way the system would work under this bill is that, if anyone lodges an objection within that two-week period, whether they be the landholder concerned, a neighbour of the landholder or anyone else who believes they would be affected by the mining proposal, then those objectors become parties to the proceedings in the Environment, Resources and Development Court.

The forum has not changed. It is still the ERD Court, but what has changed is that it is no longer just a private matter between the individual landholder and the mining company. If people believe they will be, or are likely to be, affected by the mine, then they do have that forum to be able to have their say. They have the right to go along to court and say no. That does not guarantee that they will win, I should say. It just guarantees that they get to have their say. It recognises that in mining projects such as Hillside—which covers many thousands of hectares and would affect hundreds, if not thousands, of people in all its aspects, whether it is the pit, the overburden, the pipelines or the port facilities—the stakeholders clearly are bigger than just the individual landholders.

The way I have drafted this bill is that the provisions in relation to exempt land or the meaning of exempt land have not changed. They are pretty much the same provisions. I think there is a minor technical amendment because some of the ministers who are mentioned no longer exist, so there is some updating, but the thrust of it is identical. The bill provides for the notification period. It provides for the waiver of exemption, for the cooling-off period that exists in the current bill and for the applications to the environment court.

One important aspect of this bill, though, is that when these cases go to court—they used to go to the Mining Warden's Court; they now go to the Environment, Resources and Development Court—there has never been a great deal of guidance to the court on what it should be looking for, what factors it should be taking into account in making its decision, so I have included in this bill a list of considerations that the court must have regard to.

They include, firstly, the expected duration of the proposed mining operations. That is important, because the decision that is being made over on Yorke Peninsula is whether 15 years' worth of copper should trump potentially thousands of years' worth of growing food. The life expectancy of the mine is an important consideration.

The second consideration is the likely effect of the proposed mining operations on uses of land, including future uses, adjacent to and in the vicinity of land on which the mining operations are to occur. That takes into account the impact of mining on the neighbours. That is precisely what the neighbours of the Hillside mine have said that they are concerned about. They are concerned about windblown dust. They are concerned about windblown radioactive dust. They are concerned about impacts on water flow and water quality, a range of what you might call neighbour impacts.

The third consideration is that the court has to have regard to the possible social, environmental and economic impact of the proposed mining operations. They will need to take into account employment: employment created and employment forgone. They will also need to take into account the social impacts, and I imagine that they would take into account issues such as whether there is to be a fly-in fly-out workforce and the impact on rents for people who require rental accommodation: a range of economic factors that accompany mining projects throughout Australia.

The fourth consideration that the court must take into account is the extent to which rehabilitation of the land is likely to be required on account of the impact of the proposed mining operations. A key question for farming communities in particular is, 'Will the land be rehabilitated to a state that we can farm here again?' In relation to Hillside, the answer is clearly no. There is going to be a massive hole in the ground and when 15 years has passed and the mine has finished operations, it will remain a massive hole in the ground. It will not be able to be farmed.

The final consideration that the court is to have regard to is the type of minerals sought to be recovered and the relative abundance or rarity of those minerals in other parts of the state. That means that the court should consider whether the minerals are abundant elsewhere, because that would go against sacrificing farmland. If, on the other hand, the minerals were not abundant, they were rare minerals and they were not to be found in other places, then that would speak in favour of allowing mining in that area to go ahead.

This bill does seek to give some guidance to the court as to what it should be taking into account. It would be pretty difficult to say that there are any relevant considerations that are not in there. It has economic, social, environmental and neighbour impacts, and it has the long-term vision as well. This bill effectively does give faith to the petition that was tabled in parliament last Thursday. It is the type of reform that country people have been looking for, and it is the type of reform that I believe this council should get behind. I commend the bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.T. Ngo.